Luke 2:23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Every male, &c.— God having acquired a peculiar right to the first-born of Israel, by preserving them amid the destruction brought on the first-born of the Egyptians, though he had accepted of the tribe of Levi as an equivalent, yet would have the memory of it preserved by the little acknowledgement of five shekels, or about 12s. 6d. of our money (see Numbers 18:15-16.) and in case of an omission herein, it might reasonably have been expected that the child should be cut off by some judgment. The first-born, therefore, were redeemed, by paying this money, in such a sense as all the people were, when, at the time that they were numbered, each of them paid half a shekel, as a ransom for their souls, that there might be no plague among them. See Exodus 30:12-16.