An early Biblical reference is Abraham being reported to pay "four hundred shekels of silver" to Ephron the Hittite for the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (Genesis 23:15–16).

Shekel is any of several ancient units of weight or of currency in ancient Israel, from the Hebrew root ש-ק-ל (š-q-l) meaning 'weigh' (שָׁקַל šaqal 'to weigh', שֶׁקֶל šeqel 'a standard weight'), common with other Semitic languages like Akkadian (resp.

From the formation of the modern State of Israel on 14 May 1948 through 1952 banknotes continued to be issued by the Anglo-Palestine Bank as the Palestine pound which was pegged at £P1 = £1 sterling.

[7] The Israeli pound (לירה ישראלית, "lira yisraelit") was the currency of the State of Israel from June 1952 until it was replaced with the shekel on 24 February 1980.

From 1955, after the Bank of Israel was established and took over the duty of issuing banknotes, only the Hebrew name was used, along with the symbol "IL".

[8] The pegging to sterling was abandoned on 1 January 1954, and in 1960, the sub-division of the Israeli pound was changed from 1,000 prutot to 100 agorot.

Because lira (Hebrew: לִירָה) was a loanword from Latin, a debate emerged in the 1960s over the name of the Israeli currency due to its non-Hebrew origins.

In addition, the signing of free trade agreements helped the Israeli economy become more competitive, while heavy investment in its industrial and scientific base allowed the country to take advantage of opportunities associated with the rise of the global knowledge economy, thus greatly increasing exports and opening new markets for its products and services.

As a result of these factors, inflation has been relatively low and the country now maintains a positive balance of payments, with a current account surplus equivalent to about 3% of its GDP in 2010.

[10][11] On 26 May 2008, CLS Bank International announced that it would settle payment instructions in new shekels, making the currency fully convertible.

[23] The committee proposed that the new series would bear the portraits of prominent Hebrew poets, among them Rachel Bluwstein, Shaul Tchernichovsky, Leah Goldberg and Nathan Alterman.

In December 2010, it was announced that the series would feature portraits of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Rachel, and Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

[26] On 14 November 2012, the Bank of Israel announced that the new series of banknotes is in the final stages of design.