But there was no law that required the presentation of a firstborn son in the sanctuary. Luke paraphrases Exodus 13.2 in 2.23, but this simply declares that a firstborn male was holy to the Lord. What then had to be done was not to present him physically but to redeem him when he was a month old, to buy him back from the Lord by paying a priest five shekels, as is set out in Numbers 3.47–48 and 18.15–16 and of which there is no mention in Luke’s story.
