2 Chronicles 4:5 - Exposition

An handbreadth . Not זֶרֶת , "a span", but טֶפַח , "the palm of the open hand," the breadth of the four fingers, which Thenius puts at 3.1752 inches, but Conder's table at 2.66 inches. It received and held should be translated, it was able to hold . Three thousand baths. The parallel has two thousand baths, and this latter is the likelier reading. It is, however, conceivable that the statement of Kings may purport to give the quantity of water used, and that of Chronicles the quantity which the vessel at its fullest could accommodate. As to the real capacity of the bath, we are hopelessly at sea. Josephus's estimate of it is about eight gallons and a half, that of the rabbinists about four gallons and a half, and Conder, in the 'Handbook to the Bible,' p. 80, a fractional quantity above six gallons. The largest bowls on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, the silver bowl of Croesus, and the bronze bowl in Scythia (Herodotus, 1.51; 4.81), did not, under the lowest estimate of the bath, hold as much as one-half of the contents of this vast sea of brass of Solomon. The use of this vessel was, as we read in the next verse, for the priests to wash in, or, as some would read, to wash at ( Exodus 30:18-20 ).