Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/286

 a thousand [pieces] of silver, whilst the lords of the Philistines persuaded Delilah to beguile Samson into telling her wherein lay his great strength by the promise of eleven hundred [pieces] of silver, which money she afterwards received. Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal (Gideon) was enabled to form his conspiracy by hiring 'vain and light persons' with the three-score and ten [pieces] of silver taken by his mother's brother from the house of Baal-berith. Finally, we have a sum of eleven hundred [pieces] of silver which were stolen by that "man of Mount Ephraim whose name was Micah" from his mother, of which his mother took (when he had restored the money) two hundred [shekels] and gave them to the founder, who "made thereof a graven image and a molten image ." Now although all these are considerable sums, all exceeding a mina, yet there is no mention whatever made of the latter unit of account in any of these passages. The story of another theft shows that gold as well as silver was reckoned originally only by the shekel and not by the mina. Thus Achan "saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight ." As fifty shekels were a mina, here if anywhere we ought to have found the latter term. From this we infer without hesitation that the shekel was the original unit.

But there is another word besides keseph which is translated piece of money or piece of silver. This is the term qesitah which occurs in three passages of the Old Testament. Thus Jacob bought the parcel of ground where he had spread his tent at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, "for an hundred pieces of money" (Gen. xxxiii. 19); and the same word is used in the parallel passage in Joshua (xxiv. 32) where the children of Israel buried Joseph's bones in Shechem in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought for an hundred pieces of money. Lastly, Job's kinsfolk and acquaintances gave him every man a piece of money, and every one a ring of gold (xlii. 11). It has been always a matter of doubt what this piece of money really was. The Septuagint translates