Weights, scales

(Lev. 19:36). In deep antiquity gold and silver were bought and sold by weight, so that persons engaged in any kind of trade usually carried with them a pair of scales and various weights, consisting of stones of various sizes and kept in special pouches tied to the merchant’s belt. Avaricious merchants kept two sets of scales with them, one lighter for selling, and another heavier for buying. Is it not to this practice that the prophet Micah points, saying: “Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?” (6:11).

It may be supposed that Holy Scripture, besides scales, also mentions the steelyard, or unequal-armed balance (Prov. 16:11; Isa. 40:12). The smallest unit of weight among the Hebrews was the gerah, equal to the weight of a grain of bread. Twenty gerahs made up the sacred shekel (Exod. 30:13; Lev. 27:25, and elsewhere). Half a shekel was called a beka (Gen. 24:22). Three thousand shekels made up a talent (Exod. 25:39; 2 Kings 12:30 [as given]). The mina is mentioned for the first time in 1 Kings (10:17) and afterward in the prophet Ezekiel (45:12).

Sixty minas equaled a talent, since each mina consisted of 50 shekels. The pound, mentioned by the Evangelist John (12:3; 19:39), was the Roman pound. The Aeginetan talent, like the Hebrew, contained 60 minas, and the mina 50 drachmas; only the drachma, equal to the sacred Hebrew shekel, contained not 20 gerahs, as among the Hebrews, but 6 obols. Similar to the Aeginetan and Hebrew talent was also the Babylonian (Neh. 3:91 [as given]).