CHAPTER X. The Systems of Egypt, Babylon, and Palestine.

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 received²⁸. Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal (Gideon) was enabled to form his conspiracy by hiring ‘vain and light persons’²⁹ 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 image³⁰.” 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 weight³¹.” As fifty shekels were a mina, here if anywhere we ought to have found the latter term. From