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Money and measures
Talent
a weight of about 30–36 kg · 3,000 shekels · in silver, about 20 years’ wages
The talent was the largest unit of weight in the Bible, roughly a load a man could carry: talent weights found by archaeologists range from about 30 to 36 kilograms. It equaled 3,000 shekels (Exodus 38:25–27). In the Old Testament it is used for silver and gold, as in the 666 talents of gold that came to Solomon every year (1 Kings 10:14).
In New Testament times a talent of silver was counted as 6,000 drachmas or denarii — about twenty years’ wages for a laborer. So the servant in Jesus’ parable who owed ten thousand talents (Matthew 18:24) owed a sum no worker could ever repay. The parable of the talents (Matthew 25) gave European languages a new word: from it, “talent” came to mean a natural gift — in English, in Russian (talant) and in many other languages.
Key verses
The hundred talents of silver were used to cast the bases of the sanctuary and the bases of the veil—100 bases from the 100 talents, one talent per base.The weight of gold that came to Solomon each year was 666 talents,As he began the settlements, a debtor was brought to him owing ten thousand talents.To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent—each according to his own ability. And he went on his journey.And great hailstones weighing almost a hundred pounds each rained down on them from above. And men cursed God for the plague of hail, because it was so horrendous.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Talent*; Weights and Measures: Talent
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
