Shekel

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 1/3,000^th of a talent.

See Also

The Meanings of the Measures