Bath

The bath was the basic liquid-volume measure in ancient Israel, the wet counterpart of the dry ephah and identical to it in capacity — about 22 litres, or six standard hin. Ten baths made one kor (1 Kings 5:11; Ezekiel 45:14). It is the unit by which the prophet Ezekiel regulates priestly offerings of oil and grain (Ezekiel 45:11, 14), and by which Solomon's Temple inventory was tallied: the cast bronze 'sea' that stood before the sanctuary held two thousand baths of water (1 Kings 7:26 — about 44,000 litres). Archaeologists working at Tel Lachish and elsewhere have unearthed Iron Age storage jars marked bt or bt lmlk ('bath of the king') — royal storage vessels calibrated to the official standard so that royal grain, oil, and wine could be transported and taxed by uniform measure. The bath measure is also the unit by which the unjust steward in Luke 16 falsifies the receipt for the master's olive oil ('one hundred baths', Luke 16:6) — though Luke uses the Greek transliteration batos.