And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat [for] food to his household,.... This measure was the Hebrew measure "cor", or "corus", and, according to Bishop Cumberland e, its contents were 17,477 solid inches; it was equal to ten ephahs, each of which held two gallons and an half, and the cor held seventy five wine gallons five pints, and somewhat more; according to some f, what it held was equal to six hundred forty eight Roman pounds; so that twenty thousand of them contained 12,960,000 pounds of wheat:
and twenty measures of pure oil; squeezed out of the olives without breaking them; the same kind of measure is here expressed as before, and the quantity answered to 12,960 Roman pounds; another writer g reckons a cor to contain 1080 Roman pounds; so that Hiram had every year 21,600 pounds of oil. In 2 Chronicles 2:10, it is twenty thousand baths of oil now not to take notice that the measures are different, a bath was but the tenth part of a cor, reference is had to different things; here the writer relates what was given to Hiram for his own family, there what was given to the workmen, where several other things are mentioned besides these:
thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year: so long as the building lasted, and the workmen were employed; but Abarbinel thinks that he gave it to him as long as he lived, out of his great munificence and liberality.
e Scripture Weights and Measures, c. 3. p. 86. f Vid. Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. p. 517. g Van Till in Cantic. Mosis, p. 54.