“…and Shlomo gave Hiram 100,000 bushels of wheat as food for his household and a thousand gallons of oil from pressed olives — this is what Shlomo gave Hiram each year.”-1 Kings 5:25
As payment for all the wood Hiram would provide to build the temple for the Lord, Solomon agreed to provide food for Hiram’s entire royal household.
This basically meant that Solomon would be feeding the entire government of Tzor for every year he received wood from Hiram.
Needless to say, that’s a helluva lot of perishables that needed to be provided on a regular basis.
Verse 25 breaks it down for us.
We’re told that Solomon agreed to send 100,000 bushels of wheat and 1000 gallons of olive oil every single year that Hiram provided the precious cedar logs from his forest in Lebanon.
Now, I gotta be honest with you homies.
The Hebrew here is a little confusing.
Most English Bible translations will use the words “bushels” and “gallons.”
But the original Hebrew being word used here is KOR in both instances.
To be precise…
The original Hebrew for “100,000 bushels” of wheat is ESRIM ELEPH KOR…
And the original Hebrew for “1000 gallons” of olive oil is ESRIM KOR.
ESRIM means 20, and ELEPH is 1000.
So this translates to 20,000 KOR of wheat and 20 KOR of olive oil.
So right off the bat, we run into two problems.
The first problem is that we don’t know exactly how much a KOR is.
The second problem is that, technically speaking, a KOR is a unit of measurement normally only applied to dry goods.
But here it’s also being applied as a liquid measurement for the olive oil.
So what gives?
Well, here’s the solution.
In Hebrew, a KOR was the biggest dry unit of measurement used in those days…
Just as an ELEPH (1,000) was the largest pure numerical unit commonly used.
Are you feeling me here?
In other words, these units of measurement are being used metaphorically.
They ain’t supposed to be taken literally.
It’s like me saying I spent a ton of money on that date I went on last night.
Did I literally spend a “ton” of money?
Of course not (well, actually, maybe I did lol).
So if we were to choose an expression appropriate to the Biblical era, saying something like a “donkey load” would work.
Because what is a donkey load?
It’s basically loading up a donkey with as many goods as it can carry without the animal buckling over and collapsing.
There ain’t no precision involved here.
Just think of a KOR as a fully loaded donkey.
It was a practical expression of measurement based on how much a donkey could carry, not an exact weight.
So with that in mind, I think it’s cool to say Solomon agreed to pay Hiram 20,000 donkey loads of wheat and 20 donkey loads of olive oil every year.
Either way you look at it, that’s a lot of wheat!
Alrighty, so now I gotta extract a takeaway from all of this.
So here’s what I got for you.
Sometimes we miss the point because we’re too focused on exact numbers and technical details.
The Biblical author’s goal wasn’t to tell us the precise weight of the wheat or the exact volume of the olive oil.
He wanted to communicate that Solomon was sending a massive amount of provisions to Hiram every year
In other words, the Temple wasn’t built on the cheap.
It required a tremendous investment of resources.
Ya feel me?
Done.
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