Exodus 30:11-13

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

The Half Shekel for the Sanctuary

¹¹ The Lord spoke to Moses: ¹² When you take a census of the Israelites to register them, at registration all of them shall give a ransom for their lives to the Lord, so that no plague may come upon them for being registered. ¹³ This is what each one who is registered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to the Lord.