Seah
2 Kings 7:1 Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD, To morrow about this time shall a measure <seah> of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures <seah> of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
According to Jewish tradition, a seah was a fraction of an ephah. Most think it was 1/3 of an ephah. The word simply means “to define”. If indeed it was 1/3 of an ephah, that means it was 1/30th of an chomer. We know a chomer was supposed to be worth one shekel. If true, that means God is here promising that tomorrow, after the siege was lifted (and prices correspondingly dropped radically) that the grain would STILL be fifteen times more expensive than it should be!
That doesn’t seem realistic. The king who was told this said, “Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” – windows in heaven would bring a great abundance, and correspondingly low prices – lower even than the usual price of 1 shekel per chomer.
As it happened, the Israelites went out and plundered the abandoned food of their erstwhile conquerors, which radically lowered the price of grain even below normal. Given that fact, we must understand seah to mean chomer. It’s the only quantity that makes sense of God’s prophecy – that the next day, the price of grain would be 2 chomers per shekel, half the normal price!
Genesis 18:2, 6 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him… And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures <seah> of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.
But this verse makes us question that conclusion; because here, to feed only three guests, he requested three seahs of meal. If that was the chomer, it’s enough to feed 300 people! Highly unlikely... but if it was to feed THREE PEOPLE, it can only make sense to request three daily portions of bread, THREE OMERS!
How can this word mean chomers in one place, and omers in another? The only possible solution is that this word does not mean a specific unit, but can be used to mean ANY unit in casual conversation. So the Bible translated it correctly as a generic word meaning “measure”, because the word itself simply means “to define”, as in “one defined unit” of something!
