Bath

The bath is the standard Hebrew liquid-volume unit. Scripture names it as the measure of the temple's largest bronze vessels, of the wine and oil under royal requisition, of the wine-yield of a vineyard, and — in Ezekiel's reform decree — as one of the just-measures the people are required to keep. The bath does not stand alone: it is the liquid half of a paired system, calibrated against the homer above it, equal in magnitude to the dry ephah, and surrounded by the smaller hin and log of the offering-table.

The Bath in the Temple and Royal Stores

Solomon's molten sea is sized by the bath. Of that great bronze basin, "it was a handbreadth thick: and its brim was wrought like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily: it held two thousand baths" (1 Ki 7:26). The same bath-unit measures the smaller temple lavers: "And he made ten basins of bronze: one basin contained forty baths; and every basin was four cubits; and on every one of the ten bases one basin" (1 Ki 7:38). The bath is the standard liquid-volume reference both for the largest single bronze vessel of the sanctuary and for each of the ten bases.

In the post-exilic court, the bath is the unit by which the Persian crown caps Ezra's commission. Artaxerxes' decree directs the treasurers "to a hundred talents of silver, and to a hundred cors of wheat, and to a hundred baths of wine, and to a hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much" (Ezr 7:22). The hundred-bath ceiling sets the shared liquid-supply unit for both wine and oil under the royal requisition.

The Bath as the Sign of a Failed Vineyard

Isaiah uses the bath to size the collapse of the judgment-vineyard: "For ten acres of vineyard will yield one bath, and a homer of seed will yield [but] an ephah" (Isa 5:10). One bath of wine drawn from ten acres of vines is the wine-line of the failure; the paired homer-of-seed yielding only an ephah is the grain-line. The bath here is the standard wine-measure by which the prophet quantifies the yield-collapse, and the homer is the standard grain-volume on the opposite side of the same disaster.

The Homer as Master Standard

Ezekiel's standard-measures decree fixes the bath against a larger anchor: "The ephah and the bath will be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth part of a homer, and the ephah the tenth part of a homer: its measure will be after the homer" (Eze 45:11). The homer is the master volume from which both the liquid bath and the dry ephah are derived as one-tenth subunits. The bath is exhibited as a calibrated tenth of the homer rather than a unit set by local custom.

The homer is also the master of the larger calculations elsewhere. The valuation of a sanctified field is set by the homer of barley sown into it: "the sowing of a homer of barley [will be valued] at fifty shekels of silver" (Le 27:16). The wilderness quail-harvest is reckoned by the same standard — "he who gathered least gathered ten homers" (Nu 11:32) — fixing the floor-share of the gathering at a ten-homer minimum per household.

The Ephah as Dry Counterpart

The ephah is the bath's dry twin. Ezekiel's reform makes them equal in magnitude (Eze 45:11), and the older standard fixes the omer at a tenth of the ephah: "Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah" (Ex 16:36). Through that ratio the daily manna-omer is calibrated against the ephah as the larger dry-measure standard.

The ephah surfaces repeatedly as the dry-measure of meal in offering-narratives. Hannah brings her weaned son to Shiloh "with a three-year-old bull, and one ephah of meal, and a bottle of wine" (1 Sa 1:24); Gideon prepares "unleavened cakes of an ephah of meal" for the angel under the oak (Jdg 6:19); Ruth's day of gleaning yields "about an ephah of barley" (Ru 2:17). In each scene the ephah is the dry-measure unit registering the size of the meal-portion.

The Hin and the Log

Below the bath sit the smaller liquid measures of the offering-table. The hin frames the daily lamb-accompaniment: "the fourth part of a hin of beaten oil, and the fourth part of a hin of wine for a drink-offering" (Ex 29:40). The same quarter-hin partitions the per-lamb drink-offering elsewhere — "wine for the drink-offering, the fourth part of a hin... for each lamb" (Nu 15:5) — and the strong-drink libation poured in the holy place: "the drink-offering of it will be the fourth part of a hin for the one lamb: in the holy place you will pour out a drink-offering of strong drink to Yahweh" (Nu 28:7). When Ezekiel acts out a siege-ration, his water-allowance is a sub-portion of the same hin: "you will drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you will drink" (Eze 4:11).

The log is the smallest of the named liquid units. In the eighth-day cleansing-kit for the leper the priest takes "two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe-lamb a year old without blemish, and three tenth parts [of an ephah] of fine flour for a meal-offering, mingled with oil, and one log of oil" (Le 14:10). The log of oil completes the parcel as the named oil-quantity at the smallest grade of the liquid-measure series.

The Just Bath, the Just Ephah, the Just Hin

The measures are not neutral instruments. Levitical law binds three of them together under a single covenant rule: "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, you⁺ will have: I am Yahweh your⁺ God, who brought you⁺ out of the land of Egypt" (Le 19:36). The just-qualifier attaches to each member of the four-part roster — balances, weights, ephah, hin — as a single covenant obligation grounded in the Exodus.

Ezekiel makes the bath itself an explicit member of the same just-measure rule when the reform-decree opens: "You⁺ will have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath" (Eze 45:10). The closing detail of the reform fastens the bath against the cor and the homer at the level of operating ratios: "and the set portion of oil, of the bath of oil, the tenth part of a bath out of the cor, [which is] ten baths, even a homer (for ten baths are a homer)" (Eze 45:14). The bath is set as a tenth of the cor, the cor is identified as ten baths and as the homer, and the whole liquid-measure system is closed with the homer as its master and the bath as its calibrated tenth.