Cubit
As with the other measurements, each culture had their own cubit ranging from about 11 inches to 26 inches. This is an example of a Babylonian “yardstick” with dimensions of what they called a “cubit”, broken down into palms, feet, and fingers.
This cubit stick is from 15th century BC Nippur (near Babylon), and shows a cubit of 20.4” (51.8 cm). But even in the Bible, it is acknowledged that there is more than one cubit:
Deuteronomy 3:11 For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; ... nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.
This “cubit of a man” implies that there was another cubit that was different in length, a “cubit of God”.
2 Chronicles 3:3 This is the foundation which Solomon laid for building the house of God: The length was sixty cubits (by cubits according to the former measure) and the width twenty cubits.
Here again we see God emphasizing “according to the former measure of the cubit”. Chronicles was revised under Ezra, after the Babylonian captivity. Kings was written much earlier, and makes no mention of a difference in cubits when it tells the same story.
Ezekiel 40:5, 41:8 … and in the man’s hand a measuring reed of six cubits long by the cubit and an hand breadth: … a full reed of six great cubits.
God said to find the true cubit, you took one “common” cubit, and added the width of a hand – and that was what God meant when He said “cubit”. Ezekiel was writing from Babylon, so this would mean take the cubit they knew – the Babylonian cubit of about 21 inches – and add one handbreadth.
So clearly around the Babylonian captivity the cubit Israel was familiar with changed. God’s cubit was the larger, “great cubit”, one containing an additional handbreadth.
