Cubit

CUBIT, a sort of Measure in use among the Antients. The Hebrews call it Amma, or as one might say, the Mother of other Measures. A Cubit originally was nothing else but the distance from the Elbow bending inwards to the extremity of the middle Finger. This Measure is the fourth part of a well proportioned Man’s Stature¹. The common Cubit is eighteen Inches. The Hebrew Cubit, according to the computation of Dr. Cumberland, and M. Pelletier of Rohan, which we have followed, is twenty Inches and an half, Paris measure. Many others fix it at exactly eighteen Inches. The Talmudists observe, that the Hebrew Cubit was larger by one quarter, than the Roman. It was Origen’s opinion², that the Cubit which Noah made use of, when he built the³ Ark, was equal to six common Cubits. S. Austin⁴ has followed Origen in his conjecture, and thinks those objections to be very ridiculous, which some raised against the enormous size, which the Ark must have been of, if these dimensions were observed.

Lewis Capellus, and several others, have asserted, that there were two sorts of Cubits among the Hebrews, one sacred, the other common; the first of three Royal Feet, the second, of a Foot and an half. Moses, Numb. xxxv. 4. assigns to the Levites a thousand sacred Cubits of Land, round about the City, where they dwelt; and in the next verse, he gives them two thousand (common ones). In like manner, 1 Kings vii. 15. the two columns of Brass, which were in Solomon’s Temple, are said to be eighteen Cubits high; and in the second Book of Chronicles, iii. 15. thirty five Foot; which is no way to be reconciled without distinguishing two sorts of Cubits, the one whereof is double the other.

Villalpandus, and several Writers after him, allow the sacred Cubit to be but an Hand’s breadth above the common Cubit. He supposes Moses to have spoken of the common Cubit, when he said, Deut. iii. 11. that it was of the length or measure of a Man’s arm folded inward, Ad mensuram cubiti virilis manus; and that the sacred Cubit was an Hand’s-breadth above this other common Cubit, as is plainly observed in Ezekiel xliii. 13. These are the measures of the altar after the cubits; the cubit is a cubit and an hand-breadth.

Notwithstanding these Reasons, we are persuaded, that there was but one sort of Cubit among the Hebrews, from the time of their going out of Egypt to the Babylonish Captivity: And this was the Egyptian Cubit⁵; the Measure whereof was taken some years since from the old Standards of Grand Cairo; and that it is only since the Jews returned from their Captivity, that the Scripture has taken notice of two sorts of Measures, to distinguish the old Hebrew Cubit from that of Babylon, which the Captives were used to during their abode on the other side of the Euphrates. Upon this is grounded the precaution taken by Ezekiel in observing that the Cubit he is speaking of, is the true old Cubit, larger by an hand’s breadth than the common Cubit. As to other Passages, they are easily to be reconciled, without having recourse to this distinction of a sacred Cubit, which some suppose to have been double to the common one. See the Commentators.

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