Achan’s third theft was of gold — namely, a regula [rule / rod / wedge], as our text has [it], “golden, [of] 50 shekels.” But what this regula is, there is not one [single] opinion. For in Hebrew it is called laschon [לָשׁוֹן, lashon], that is, “tongue,” and in Greek similarly γλῶσσα [glōssa, “tongue”]. And St. Ambrose keeps “tongue” (bk. 2 of the Offices, ch. 26). And Abulensis indeed, simply following the Latin text, thinks it was a regula [ruler] for directing [straightening] something. But what likeness of a rule [is there] with a “tongue”? And what were those things so precious, which a golden rule would direct? Secondly: Radak, in Pagninus, on the word Laschon, interprets [it as] a golden rod in the likeness of a tongue. But of what kind, and of what thing, is a rod of this sort? Thirdly: Rabbi Eliezer (ch. 38) says that it was the golden tongue of a certain idol, before whose feet there had also been offered, for honor’s sake, both that precious garment and the 200 shekels of which [we have] spoken hitherto. This indeed is uncertain; yet it could have happened that there was some idol of this kind, to which a tongue was for that reason given
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as golden — or because it was a president of eloquence, as [is fabled] concerning Mercury and the Gallic Hercules, from whose mouth so many golden chains proceed (in Lucian), as the Gentiles have fabled; or because it uttered prosperous and happy oracles, as some [do] in Herodotus. Fourthly: Masius supposes it was a golden little-sword [gladiolus], with which the Jerichoites had armed some god of theirs — because the most ancient Poet Naevius also called a little-sword a “little-tongue” [lingula], as Gellius attests. But since Masius calls Rabbi Eliezer’s former exposition a “Jewish dream,” I do not see how he does not say that he himself also dreams. For granted that a gladiolus is sometimes a lingula, shall we therefore at once bind this to some idol? Could it not be the little-sword of some opulent, noble, and royal boy? Or even a man’s dagger [pugio]? or even a shorter sword, of which [we read] in Judges ch. 3 [Ehud’s dagger]? For since the Hebrew name truly signifies a “tongue,” this [view of Masius] can, in the Rabbis’ exposition, only be charged as [part] of the dream — namely, that they fasten it to an idol. Fifthly: Josephus renders [it] μάζαν [mazan] in bk. 5, ch. 1. But since among the Greeks μάζα [maza] is a “lump” [offa], or flour mixed with oil and water, or polenta, and as it were porridge, or a certain barley lump viler than bread itself — as is plain from Hesychius, Athenaeus, Xenophon, and others — how can it be golden? I will explain this place of Josephus, which was sometimes not easy for me. It was the custom in the East to call certain lumps of gold and silver by those names by which a fixed weight and shape of bread was named. For what our Interpreter [Vulgate] renders “a twist [loaf] of bread” (1 Sam. 2:3, 6; and ch. 10:4; 1 Chron. 16:3; Jer. 37:20) is in Hebrew cicar [כִּכָּר, kikkar]; and (Judges 8:5) “loaves” in Hebrew [is] ciceroth [kikkeroth]. And who does not know that cicar is also a “talent,” and a lump of gold, silver, or bronze similar to some bread (Exod. 25:[39]; ch. 37:24; 2 Sam. 9:14 [and] ch. 20:39; 2 Kings 5:21, 22; ch. 15:19; ch. 18:14; ch. 23:33; and elsewhere)? And in this way, too, cakes, dried-figs, or figs were called “cicar of figs” or “of dried-figs,” as it is in the Talmudic Mishnayot, tractate On the Mixtures [Kilaim], ch. 2. So also from the Latins the name massa [lump] is received; and by the Spaniards today [it is] cera [wax] — and, when the honeycombs are pressed out, shaped and hardened, it is called “bread-wax” [panis cera]. The golden maza, therefore, in Josephus, is a piece and lump of gold, shaped like bread or a harder porridge and polenta, and heavy — as it is also rendered by Theodoret’s translator. And perhaps Josephus used this word maza the more willingly, the more nearly it approaches the Hebrew massa [מַשָּׂא, masa], which is “a burden and weight” (Num. 4:14, 19, and 23, 26; ch. 11:11; Deut. 1:12; Isa. 46:1, 2; 2 Sam. 15:32; Ps. 37[38]:5; and Isa. 30:27; Zeph. 3:18). For Josephus is wont not rarely to give Hebrew names a Greek cloak. But is the error to be forgiven him, by which he says the weight of this lump was 200 shekels? For he confounds the third theft with the second, and manifestly deserts both the Hebrew and the Greek text, which accurately distinguish these three [thefts]. But much less is it to be forgiven to his old translator Rufinus, who — not having grasped even this [Josephus’s] meaning, since he mixes even the third with the first, as if all were one thing — very ineptly renders thus: “When Achar had found a royal cloak all woven of gold, having a maza of gold, that is, of two hundred shekels in weight.”
Sixthly: Vatablus in this place interprets [it] “a plate of gold” [auri laminam]. And [this] pleases: first, because it agrees with Josephus, for “a maza of gold” is like some plate [lamina]. Secondly: because it seems the Latin Interpreter [Vulgate] had the same mind, so that he rendered not regula [rule], but tegula [tile]. Thirdly: because thus is best signified [that] this gold stolen by Achan was still raw, not stamped and reduced to coins, but a piece and lump — like a maza, a plate, and a tile in weight and shape. Fourthly: because there is some likeness of such plates and tiles with the shape of a tongue; on account of which we see also that rocks and crags are sometimes in the Scriptures called “tongues” [Leschonim, לְשׁוֹנִים] (Isa. 11:15; and ch. 15:2 and 5); and likewise a flame [is called a “tongue,” Isa. 5:24]. Fifthly: because the Innovators [Protestants] cannot fault this interpretation. For among them Calvin is entirely silent, and does not explain this word in his commentary; but Chytraeus says it is a “plate” [lamina]; Junius, in [his] annotations, [renders] “a brick” [laterem], which agrees entirely with our Interpreter’s “tile” [tegula]. Sixthly: what of [the fact] that we read that certain houses and temples were sometimes roofed with golden tiles?
But as to what is added in our text — that this tile was of 50 shekels — in the Hebrew it is expressed thus: “fifty shekels [was] its weight,” or “[a tile] which weighed 50 shekels.” And this, says Masius, can be understood in a twofold sense: either that this golden tongue was of such weight that it was worth fifty silver shekels; or that it weighed fifty staters. If we follow the former sense, its price would be twenty-five thalers [daleri]; if this [latter], three hundred. To me the latter seems the more credible. Rightly — according to what he had said a little before, from Plato in the Hipparchus: namely, that the proportion of gold to silver is twelvefold, so that (for example) as much weight of gold as one shekel is, is worth as much as 12 [silver] shekels. And hence he establishes a concord between two places of Scripture which seem very discordant. For in the last [chapter] of 2 Samuel it is said that David bought the threshing-floor from Araunah the Jebusite for 50 shekels; but at 1 Chron. 21:25, for 600 shekels. “Fifty golden shekels,” he says, “were equal in price to six hundred silver shekels.” Therefore, since this lump was golden, and is said to be equal in weight to silver [shekels]: [if] 50 shekels, its price would have to be said to have been 600 shekels — or, as appears from what was said above, 300 simple thalers, or, as Chytraeus prefers to speak, “Joachim-[thalers].” But the common and now-received opinion is that the weight of gold, [compared] to an equal weight of silver, is tenfold in value, as Covarrubias, Arias, and others explain in the cited books. This tile, therefore — [being] uncoined, since it was golden, and had the weight of 50 silver shekels — its price is to be estimated [at] 500 silver shekels, that is, 250 simple thalers.