209. Weights

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 11
Listen from:
Deuteronomy 25:13. Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.
1. The marginal reading for “divers weights” is “a stone and a stone,” which is a literal rendering of the Hebrew. See also Proverbs 11:1; 16:11. Weights were no doubt originally made of different-sized stones, from which fact eben, a stone, was used to signify a weight, even after other materials were used for weights. We have the word “stone” in our own language to denote a weight of a certain size, and the Germans use the corresponding word stein for a similar purpose.
2. Oriental peddlers still have, as in ancient times, two sets of weights, one for buying and the other for selling. Allusion is made to this species of dishonesty in Proverbs 20:10 and in Micah 6:11.