Maneh
A talent of gold would be worth about 2 million dollars today, so clearly it needs to be broken down into much smaller units called shekels. The Bible doesn’t specifically say how many shekels are in a talent, but it can be reasoned from reading...
Exodus 38:25-26 And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation was 100 talents, and 1,775 shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary: A bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for 603,550 men.
The simple math of 603,550/2 = 301,775 total shekels. Then 301,775/3,000 (shekels in a talent) = 100.5916666(etc). That’s 100 talents and 0.5916666 talents left over. To find how many shekels that is, 0.5916666*3,000 = 1,775, which is the precise number of shekels left over. Hence, 3,000 to 1! A shekel is 1/3,000th of a talent.
Ezekiel 45:12 And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs: twenty shekels, five and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels, shall be your maneh.
According to this very odd way of counting – which is significant – 60 shekels totals one “maneh”, more often spelled “mina” in English. We know there were 3,000 shekels to a talent, and we know there were 60 shekels in a mina. That means there were 50 minas in a talent!
The shekel-mina-talent system was used throughout the Middle-Eastern region, and each culture divided them differently, with different values for each. Weights like these have been found all over the Middle East, which vary widely in actual weight. Most are 60 minas per talent, unlike the 50 minas per talent God defined. That’s why God regularly emphasized that He meant HIS system of reckoning the shekel, not theirs:
Exodus 30:13 “after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs”.
This can only mean that the shekel used by other nations was wrong. Why? Because God’s measurements must all tie in with each other – that is their genius! The weights, the wheat, the wine, the omer and the cubit must all be interconnected!
