Which amounts to five hundred barrels, each bath containing about eight gallons; the bath being a measure of the same bigness with an ephah, Ezekiel 45:11. Object. This sea is said to contain three thousand baths, 2 Chronicles 4:5. Answ. Either there were two sorts of baths, as of cubits, the one common, the other sacred, and the sacred held half as much more as the common; or rather, he here speaks of what it did actually and usually contain, to wit, two thousand baths, which was sufficient for use; and in 2 Chronicles 4:5, he speaks of what it could contain if it were filled to the brim, as it is implied in the Hebrew words, which differ from these, and properly sound thus, strengthening itself, (to wit, to receive and hold as much as it could, or being filled to its utmost capacity,) it contained, or could contain, three thousand baths.
Related Commentaries of 1 Kings 7:26
1 Kings 7:26
26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.