Talents, ephahs, cubits, shekels. What do they all mean?
I know it’s not really a good idea, but sometimes I wish someone would create a version of the Bible that replaced Biblical weights and measures with modern-day figures. Instead of saying something is “five handbreadths,” it would be much more convenient for me to read “15 inches.”
Of course, that could get really difficult when the terms aren’t exact, so the opposite would be true half the time. It’s much easier to say that someone worked for a denarius “for a day’s work” rather than updating the pay scale with the ever-evolving minimum wage laws. A “day’s work” today is worth a lot more than it did when I worked at Blockbuster in 2003.
Regardless, when I read passages like Exodus 29:40 that say something is a “tenth of an ephah” and something else is a “fourth of a hin,” I’m left running to my closest Bible encyclopedia to figure out what’s going on.
As a side note, here’s a great page that lists various Biblical units and their approximate measures for you to bookmark. It’s not exact, but then again, Jewish measurements weren’t always exact either.
When I looked up Exodus 29:40 to see how much an ehpah and a hin were, I found out that an ephah was roughly 124 fluid ounces, whereas an ephah is about 22 liters. That still didn’t resonate with me personally though, so to put it in other terms, a hin is about the same size as a gallon of milk, whereas an ephah is roughly the same size as this six gallon bathroom trashcan.
Why do we need to know these measurements?
For starters, knowing exact sizes of things deepens our appreciation for Scripture. For example, when it says that Boaz gave Ruth an “ephah’s worth of barley” (Ruth 2:17), that’s roughly ten days’ worth of food. That’s a pretty generous gift!
Secondly, this accuracy speaks to the authenticity of the Bible. As a general rule, myths and legends don’t give accurate measurements. Why? Because that grounds the story in reality. And if it’s real, that means it can be disputed and classified as fake. If you’re trying to control people, you need to make the legends abstract.
Real measurements that priests 500 years in the future could use to make the exact same sacrifices shows that this story isn’t made up. These sacrifices were specified down to the ephah. If it was made up, there’s a good chance everything was just made up to begin with.
The next time you read about measures in the Bible, take a few seconds to figure out exactly how much is being specified, and put it in modern-day terms for yourself. Those few minutes can sometimes breathe new life into a Scripture you’ve glossed over dozens of times before.
