Weights
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary [1]
It is not possible today to give exact equivalents of the weights and measures referred to in the Bible. It seems that no official system operated throughout Palestine, and weights and measures may have varied from place to place and from era to era.
The important requirement of the Israelite law was that weights and measures be honest ( Leviticus 19:5-36; Deuteronomy 25:13-16). This was a requirement that greedy and dishonest merchants ignored. When selling grain they used undersized measures, and when weighing the buyer’s money they used extra heavy weights ( Amos 8:4-5). But God saw their dishonesty and announced his judgment upon them ( Proverbs 11:1; Micah 6:11).
The heaviest weight in use in Israel was the talent, which probably weighed about 50 kilograms ( 1 Chronicles 29:7; Revelation 16:21; see Talent ). A talent was divided into sixty minas ( 1 Kings 10:17), and a mina into fifty shekels. Thus a shekel, which was the basic weight, weighed between sixteen and seventeen grams ( Ezekiel 4:10; see Shekel ). Half a shekel was called a beka ( Exodus 38:26), and a twentieth of a shekel a gerah ( Exodus 30:13).
American Tract Society Bible Dictionary [2]
The Hebrews weighed all the gold and silver they used in trade. The shekel, the half shekel, the manch, the talent, are not only denominations of money, of certain values in gold and silver, but also of certain weights. The weight "of sanctuary," or weight of the temple, Exodus 30:13,24; Leviticus 5:5; Numbers 3:50; 7:19; 18:16 , was perhaps the standard weight, preserved in some apartment of the temple, and not a different weight from the common shekel; for though Moses appointed that all things valued by their price in silver should be rated by the weight of the sanctuary, Leviticus 27:25 , he made no difference between this shekel of twenty gerahs and the common shekel. Ezekiel 45:12 , speaking of the ordinary weights and measures used in traffic among the Jews, says that the shekel weighed twenty gerahs: it was therefore equal to the weight of the sanctuary.
Easton's Bible Dictionary [3]
Copyright Statement These dictionary topics are from M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. Public Domain.
Bibliography Information Easton, Matthew George. Entry for 'Weights'. Easton's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ebd/w/weights.html. 1897.
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary [4]
See "Table of Weights and Measures" at the end of the volume.
