The ordinary maneh in use among the Hebrews is supposed to have weighed a hundred shekels, or about one pound fourteen ounces avoirdupois.
In this text, however, another maneh seems to be mentioned. The passage is confessedly obscure, and various interpretations have been given of it.
Some think that three distinct manehs are referred to: one of twenty, one of twenty-five, and one of fifteen shekels. Hengstenberg suggests that the maneh was of foreign origin, and that the three different values here attached are the estimates put upon it in the different countries where it was used.
Others suppose that the text refers to but a single maneh of sixty shekels divided into three parts, 20+25+15. Chardin found this a customary mode of reckoning in the East; and though it seems strange to us, yet if the custom was practiced in Ezekiel’s time, it was but natural that the maneh should be described in this way.