Homer

The homer (Hebrew ḥōmer, meaning heap or donkey-load) was the largest standard unit of dry measure in ancient Israel, equivalent to ten ephahs and approximately eight to ten bushels in modern terms (estimates vary from about 55 to 220 liters, with most scholars settling around 220 liters or approximately 6.5 bushels). The homer thus represented the load a donkey could carry, giving it a practical basis in agricultural commerce.

The homer appears in legal and prophetic contexts. Leviticus 27:16 uses it to calculate land values for votive offerings—one homer of barley seed valued at fifty shekels of silver. Numbers 11:32 describes the immense quail harvest in the wilderness, where the least any individual gathered was ten homers. Hosea 3:2 records the prophet purchasing his estranged wife for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Ezekiel's sanctuary measurements (45:11–14) establish the homer as the standard from which the ephah and bath are derived, providing a unified metrology for the restored land. The homer's agricultural grounding made it the natural unit for grain transactions.