HEBREW WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 



293 



this lecture ; I am now going to risk another. After careful 

 examination of the original text of Ezekiel xl, o, I have been 

 forced to the conclusion that it can only be rendered, as it is in 

 all the ancient versions, Greek, Latin, and Syriac : " and in the 

 man's hand (was) a measuring-rod, six cubits and a hand- 

 breadth," not as hitherto, " six cubits of a cubit and a hand- 

 breadth each" i.e., of seven handbreadths or 28 digits. But the 

 present text is almost certainly corrupt, as the parallel passage, 

 xliii, 13, is admitted to be. I can only conjecture that a line 

 has fallen out, and for this reason. Elsewhere Ezekiel makes a 

 point of defining the several values in the scales, both of weight 

 and of capacity, which he employs (see xlv, 10-14) ; probably, 

 therefore, the original text of xl, 5, ran thus : " and in the 

 man's hand (was) a measuring-rod of six cubits by (the measure 

 of) the cubit, and of 24 handbreadths by (the measure of) the 

 handbreadth." This would at least be in agreement with the 

 monumental evidence, for in my series of articles on Herod's 

 temple (Exp. Times, xx, 182), I have shown that the court 

 of Zerub babel's temple was a square of which the side was 

 500 of the 17*6 cubit, which is precisely Ezekiel's specification 

 (xlv, 2). For it is generally admitted that the second temple, 

 in all probability, followed in this respect the directions of the 

 prophet. On literary and archaeological grounds, therefore, the 

 case for Ezekiel's cubit of seven handbreadths (20*63 inches) falls 

 to the ground, and with it the inference, based on n Chronicles 

 hi, 3, that the temple of Solomon was built on the scale of this 

 longer cubit of " the former measure." 



Nevertheless, there is good evidence for the use in Palestine 

 of such a cubit at a later date in the table of measures of 

 length attributed to Julian of Ascalon (in Hultsch, Metrol. 

 Scriptor. i, 200/, cf. Bnr,/e. Biblica, iv, col. 5293/). The table is 

 an excellent example of the metrological syncretism which we 

 found in the latest Jewish weight system, showing how, about 

 the second century of our era, the various standards of length, 

 Roman, Greek, Jewish and Persian, were accommodated to each 

 other. The Eoman imperial mile of 1,000 double paces of 

 5 feet each, had long been reckoned as 8 J Greek stadia, each of 

 600 feet. But in Palestine, as we know from the Talmud, the 

 Persian measure, the vis, called stadion by the Greeks, was in 

 use. It was of the parasang, of which the mile (Hebrew 

 mil, Greek milion, Matthew v, 41) was reckoned approximately 

 as one-fourth, or 7-| ris (Mishna, Ydma vi, 4, 8). Julian gives 

 us the subdivisions of the official Grseco-Eoman mile of 8J 

 stadia, and of the popular Persian and Hebrew mil of 7| stadia, 



