Bath
The chomer divided into 10 wet measurement baths or into ten 10 dry measurement ephahs (Ezekiel 45:11), but the Bible emphasizes that these are the exact same volume, just wet versus dry measure. So a bath is the same as an ephah, the only difference is that a bath is designed to hold liquids, the ephah is designed for dry goods.
The ephah further divides into ten omers (not homers!) in Exodus 16:36. The bath divides into hins; we can assume 10 hins, to be in keeping with the pattern, although we are not clearly told that. More on that later. So how big was the chomer? The majority opinion, historically, was about 80 gallons (300 liters). This has changed since the discovery of ancient jars in Tell Beit Mirsim marked “bath”, which contained about 5.75 gallons (22 liters). We’ll prove this unit from a different direction later, but we need a place to start.
If a bath is 5.75 gallons, then it’s about the same size as a modern 5-gallon/20-liter bucket. And 10 baths would be 57.5 gallons, one chomer. Interestingly this is almost exactly the same as the common 55 gallon/200-liter drum known worldwide. So when you hear “chomer” think of a barrel, and when you hear bath or ephah think of a bucket.
