Biblical and Talmudic units of measurement

These units of measurement continue to be used in functions regulating Orthodox Jewish contemporary life, based on halacha.

[1] Scholars commonly infer the absolute sizes based on the better-known Babylonian units' relations to their contemporary counterparts.

[1] The Books of Samuel portray the Temple as having a Phoenician architect, and in Phoenicia it was the Babylonian ell which was used to measure the size of parts of ships.

The stadium appears to have been adopted from Persia, while the double palm seems to have been derived from the Greek dichas.

[21] The closest thing to a formal area unit was the yoke (Hebrew: צמד tsemed)[22] (sometimes translated as acre), which referred to the amount of land that a pair of yoked oxen could plough in a single day; in Mesopotamia the standard estimate for this was 6,480 square cubits, which is roughly equal to a third of an acre.

amot) square cubit 0.232 to 0.328 m2 (2.50-3.53 ft2) "Beit rova" (Hebrew: בית רובע) - (pl.

[1] Although they both use the log as the basic unit, the Israelites differentiated their systems of volume measure between dry and liquid states.

For dry measurement, or what is simply a measure of capacity rather than of weight,[25] the smallest unit of which is the beitza (egg), followed by the log (לג),[26] followed by the kab (קב),[27] followed by the se'ah (סאה),[28] followed by the ephah (איפה), followed by the lethek (לתך), and finally by the kor (כור).

The lethek is mentioned only once in the Masoretic Text, and the Septuagint translates it by the Greek term nebeloinou (νέβελ οἴνου), meaning wine-skin.

The liquid equivalent of the omer, which appears without a special name, only being described as the tenth part of a bath,[37] is as much of an awkward fit as the omer itself, and is only mentioned by Ezekiel and the Priestly Code; scholars attribute the same explanation to it as with the Omer—that it arose as a result of decimalisation.

Those that were certain (disputed) fractions of the Kab include, in increasing order of size, ukla (עוכלא), tuman (תומן), and kapiza (קפיזא).

Of unidentified size were the ardaba (אדרב), the kuna (כונא), and the qometz (קמץ); the latter two of these were said to equate to a handful.

490 The Babylonian system, which the Israelites followed, measured weight with units of the talent, mina, shekel (Hebrew: שקל), and giru, related to one another as follows: In the Israelite system, the ratio of the giru to the shekel was altered, and the talent, mina, and giru, later went by the names kikkar (ככר), litra, and gerah (גרה), respectively; litra being the Greek form of the Latin libra, meaning pound.

The months originally had very descriptive names, such as Ziv (meaning light) and Ethanim (meaning strong, perhaps in the sense of strong rain - i.e. monsoon), with Canaanite origins, but after the Babylonian captivity, the names were changed to the ones used by the Babylonians.

The origin of Hebrew seven day week and the Sabbath, as well as the true meaning of the name, is uncertain.

5:14; Amos 8:5) presuppose its previous existence, and analysis of all the references to it in the canon makes it plain that its observance was neither general nor altogether spontaneous in either pre-exilic or post-exilic Israel.

It was probably originally connected in some manner with the cult of the moon, as indeed is suggested by the frequent mention of Sabbath and New-Moon festivals in the same sentence (Isa.

In addition to "tomorrow" (machar) and "yesterday" (etmol), the Israelite vocabulary also contained a distinct word for two days ago (shilshom).

[46] By Talmudic times, the Babylonian system of dividing up the day (from sunset to sunrise, and sunrise to sunset), into hours (Hebrew: שעה, sha'ah), parts (Hebrew: חלק, heleq, plural halaqim), and moments (Hebrew: רגע, rega, plural rega'im), had been adopted; the relationship of these units was: To complicate matters, Halakha, speaking of the relative hour, states that there are always 12 hours between the break of dawn and sunset, so these measurements are averages.