BATH1, or Bathus, or Epha, a sort of Hebrew measure, containing the tenth part of an Omer, or seven gallons and four pints, as a measure for things liquid, and three pecks and three pints, as a measure for things dry. Some have imagined without any reason, that there was a sacred measure of this name, different from the common one: the first, they tell us, contained a Bath and an half of the other; which they endeavour to prove, by what is said in the first book of Kings, of Solomon’s molten Sea, that it contained two thousand Baths, compared with what is said in the second book of Chronicles iv. 5. that it held three thousand Baths. But this difference is easily reconciled by saying that the brazen Sea itself contained two thousand Baths only, as is mentioned in the third book of Kings, but that the foot of this vessel was hollow and contained a thousand more; in all three thousand Baths, as the book of Chronicles has it.
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Footnotes
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Translators’ note. בת קולThe Septuagint render it sometimes by the word Βαιθ; sometimes by μετρητὴς, 2 Chr. c. iv. sometimes by κεράμιος, If. c. v. The ancient Latin version translates it lagena. It was the tenth part of the Chomer in liquid things, as the Ephah was in dry. Ezek xlv. 11. The Ephah and the Bath shall be of one measure, that the Bath may contain the tenth part of an Homer; and the Ephah the tenth part of an Homer. Arbuth. Tables &c. p. 99. ↩