Weights and Measures

In ancient times, units of measurement weren’t always the same from culture to culture. The people of Israel had their own system, as did the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Canaanites. Some units of measure had to do with money. God warned the people of Israel not to use dishonest scales to measure silver or gold.

Cubit. While many modern translations use the word feet instead of cubits, a cubit was approximately the measurement from the hand to the elbow. Noah was told to make the ark “300 cubits” long.

Shekel. About four-tenths of an ounce—a standard unit of measurement. Abraham gave four hundred shekels of silver—a huge amount of money—for the cave of Machpelah, where Sarah was buried. Joseph was sold as a slave for twenty shekels of silver. Talent. A talent was a way of measuring gold and silver. A talent was about seventy-five pounds. After winning a war against the Ammonites, David took a crown from the defeated king that weighed one talent. In Jesus’s parable of the talents, talent was a way of saying “a large amount of money.”