a beka[3] a head (that is, half a shekel, by the shekel of the sanctuary), for everyone who was listed in the records, from twenty years old and upward, for 603,550 men.
"When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the LORD when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them.
Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel[2] according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs),[3] half a shekel as an offering to the LORD.
The hundred talents of silver were for casting the bases of the sanctuary and the bases of the veil; a hundred bases for the hundred talents, a talent a base.
"Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head.
"Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, by their fathers' houses, all in Israel who are able to go to war."