Firkin

Firkin is an archaic English measure used in the Authorized Version for the Greek metretes, which appears only in John 2:6 in the account of the wedding at Cana. The Attic metretes was equivalent to the Hebrew bath, a liquid measure of approximately 8 to 9 gallons. The six stone water jars at Cana each held two or three firkins (metretes), meaning each jar contained roughly 16 to 27 gallons.

The significance of the measurement in John 2 is in the abundance it implies: the total volume of water transformed into wine was approximately 120 to 180 gallons — an extravagant quantity that exceeds what could be consumed at any ordinary wedding feast. This superabundance is characteristic of Jesus's miracle-signs in John's Gospel, which regularly employ excess as a marker of divine generosity: the twelve baskets of leftover bread, the 153 large fish. The firkin/metretes thus serves to calibrate the miracle's scale.