A hundred talents of silver, a hundred cors of wheat, a hundred baths of wine, a hundred baths of oil: It is not possible to give the exact equivalents in modern weights and measures for these goods. If translators choose to retain the Jewish weights and measures, it will be necessary to provide glossary entries to explain their approximate modern-day equivalents. Good News Translation and many other contemporary versions use modern equivalents instead of the biblical borrowed terms. A hundred talents is approximately 3,400 kilograms (7,500 pounds) as calculated in the British and American editions of Good News Translation at 11.3 grams per shekel with 3,000 shekels in a talent. The Australian edition of Good News Translation has 2,800 kilograms calculated at 9.33 grams per shekel. A hundred cors is about 10,000 kilograms as calculated in the British edition of Good News Translation at 100 kilograms per cor (equivalent to the load a donkey can carry). The American edition of Good News Translation has 500 bushels calculated at 5 bushels per cor. The Australian edition of Good News Translation has 13,500 kilograms calculated at 135 kilograms per cor. A hundred baths is about 2,000 liters as calculated in the British and Australian editions of Good News Translation at 20 liters per bath. The American edition of Good News Translation has 550 gallons calculated at 5.5 gallons per bath. The differences in the calculations are due to the lack of certainty by scholars about the exact measurements of the biblical weights at various historical periods.

For silver see the comments at Ezra 1.4. For wheat, wine, and oil, see Ezra 6.9. The type of oil is not specified but is understood to be olive oil, as Good News Translation makes explicit (also Contemporary English Version).

For each commodity in this verse, a limit up to a maximum amount was specified except for salt, which is to be given without prescribing how much (also English Standard Version). This expression is literally “without writing,” meaning no written order is needed. Salt was not a costly commodity at that time.

Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Ezra. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .