Under the law of Moses, adult Israelite males (“from twenty years old and above”) were required to pay “atonement money” (or “atonement silver”). This money was used to support “the service of the tabernacle,” to “make an atonement for [their] souls,” and to assure the Israelites “that there be no plague among them” (Ex. 30:12, 14, 16). This act of paying atonement money could bring to mind our own commandment to pay tithing so that we are not burned at Jesus’s coming (see D&C 64:23; see also “Plagues, and the Atonement”).
Also, during the period of the law of Moses, Israelites who were not of the priestly family (of temple workers) were commanded to pay redemption money for their firstborn son. The commandment is called pidyon haben, or “the redemption of the first born” son. Numbers 18:15–16 states: “Every thing that openeth the [womb] in all flesh, which they bring unto the Lord, whether it be of men or beasts, shall be thine: nevertheless the firstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem. And those that are to be redeemed from a month old shalt thou redeem, according to thine estimation, for the money of five shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs” (see also Num. 3:45; 8:17).