Handbreadth
A cubit is composed of seven handbreadths. Like all of God’s measurements, this unit has its own purpose and function, and more importantly, it has its own meaning!
Psalms 39:5 Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.
The Bible uses “handbreadth” to represent a short span of years. This tells us the Bible clearly intends the handbreadths to represent units of time. Now if you recall from measuring your cubit, you noticed that the arm is five palms long to the wrist, with your hand containing the other two palms.
If the tip of your middle finger is where you are born, and you gradually “grow”, at about 15 years old you get a thumb – the age at which you start getting really strong and able to work alongside men and be truly useful – as a hand without a thumb is useless.
At the wrist you become 20 years old, and your adulthood begins. The next 30 years are the prime of your life, corresponding to your forearm, and the last 20 years are your declining years, when less work is done. The age of your life when you can do the most work corresponds precisely to the part of the arm that does the most work! And the lifespan as a whole is pictured by seven handbreadths – one cubit!
If a man lives the ideal 70 years, and his life can be expressed in seven palms, then each palm is equal to 10 years of work on one level of symbolism! And those palms – that cubit of life – earns one talent during the 50 years it is an adult! A talent which is based on the omer, which is based on the wheat grasped by that same hand!
So the cubit, the talent, and the omer are unified in one symbol – the arm of man! But there’s so much more! The longest a man has ever lived was just under 1,000 years, for God said (to paraphrase) “in the day you sin, you shall die” (Genesis 2:17), and also “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
Given that fact, all your potential days cannot be more than 1,000 years which is therefore as a hand-breadth to God! Thus one hand equals one day – which makes sense, for doesn’t man’s work all happen in the day?
John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
And God’s plan to save mankind lasts one week – 7,000 years! Seven handbreadths making one full cubit! Of course, if we use the Babylonian cubit of six palms we only have 6,000 years because that is all the time given to the beast to rule the Earth! Therefore they only reckon by the amount of time THEY have, and use a shorter cubit of six hands/days!
So a handbreadth represents the work of a day (1 day); the work of a 7th of a lifetime (10 years); the work of one of God’s days (1,000 years), and seven handbreadths – of any of these handbreadths – is pictured by a cubit – a week, either a week of days, a week of years, a week of decades, a week of weeks, or a week of millenia! But we’re not done!
Each handbreadth (each day) is made up of 4 fingers! So each finger pictures a “watch”, a 3-hour fraction of the 12 hour day or night – 6-9, 9-12, 12-3, 3-6 (Matthew 14:25, Lamentations 2:19, etc.). If you count both hands, you have 8 fingers, which cover all eight of the 3-hour fractions of a day!
In another sense, one hand alone can divide the day into six hour portions, by connecting them with the four events of the 24-hour day – sunset, midnight, dawn, and noon!
