Discovery BoxExodus 30:15 
Context30:15 The rich are not to increase it, 1 and the poor are not to pay less than the half shekel when giving 2 the offering of the Lord, to make atonement 3 for your lives.
Exodus 38:24
Context38:24 All the gold that was used for the work, in all the work of the sanctuary 4 (namely, 5 the gold of the wave offering) was twenty-nine talents and 730 shekels, 6 according to the sanctuary shekel.
1 tn Or “pay more.”
2 tn The form is לָתֵת (latet), the Qal infinitive construct with the lamed preposition. The infinitive here is explaining the preceding verbs. They are not to increase or diminish the amount “in paying the offering.” The construction approximates a temporal clause.
3 tn This infinitive construct (לְכַפֵּר, lÿkhapper) provides the purpose of the giving the offering – to atone.
4 tn These words form the casus pendens, or independent nominative absolute, followed by the apodosis beginning with the vav (ו; see U. Cassuto, Exodus, 469).
5 tn Heb “and it was.”
6 sn There were 3000 shekels in a talent, and so the total weight here in shekels would be 87,730 shekels of gold. If the sanctuary shekel was 224 grs., then this was about 40,940 oz. troy. This is estimated to be a little over a ton (cf. NCV “over 2,000 pounds”; TEV “a thousand kilogrammes”; CEV “two thousand two hundred nine pounds”; NLT “about 2,200 pounds”), although other widely diverging estimates are also given.
