Span

The span is a unit of length — the distance from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger when the hand is fully extended. UPDV uses it both as a literal measurement (in tabernacle furniture, in a giant's stature, on the altar of Ezekiel's vision) and as a figure for Yahweh's measuring out of the heavens.

A Measurement of Sacred Objects

The high priest's breastplate is given in spans. Its specification on the mountain reads, "Foursquare it will be [and] double; a span will be its length, and a span its width" (Ex 28:16). The execution-record echoes the order: "It was foursquare; they made the breastplate double: a span was its length, and a span its width, being double" (Ex 39:9). The same unit reappears in the dimensions of Ezekiel's altar: "And these are the measures of the altar by cubits (the cubit is a cubit and a handbreadth): And a hole of one cubit and the width a cubit, and its border by its edge round about a span; and this will be the base of the altar" (Eze 43:13).

A Measurement of a Body

The unit is also used to give the height of the Philistine champion: "And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span" (1 Sa 17:4). The cubits do the heavy work; the span is the trailing fraction that pushes the figure beyond an even count.

A Figure for Yahweh's Measuring of Heaven

Isaiah turns the small handbreadth measure into a question about the scale at which Yahweh works: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" (Isa 40:12). The reversal is the point — what for a human is the smallest workable unit of length is for Yahweh the unit by which the heavens are measured out.