And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat [for]
food to his household
This measure was the Hebrew measure "cor", or "corus", and, according to Bishop Cumberland F5, its contents were 17,477 solid inches; it was equal to ten ephahs, each of which held two gallons and an half, and the cor held seventy five wine gallons five pints, and somewhat more; according to some F6, what it held was equal to six hundred forty eight Roman pounds; so that twenty thousand of them contained 12,960,000 pounds of wheat:
and twenty measures of pure oil;
squeezed out of the olives without breaking them; the same kind of measure is here expressed as before, and the quantity answered to 12,960 Roman pounds; another writer F7 reckons a cor to contain 1080 Roman pounds; so that Hiram had every year 21,600 pounds of oil. In ( 2 Chronicles 2:10 ) , it is twenty thousand baths of oil now not to take notice that the measures are different, a bath was but the tenth part of a cor, reference is had to different things; here the writer relates what was given to Hiram for his own family, there what was given to the workmen, where several other things are mentioned besides these:
thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year:
so long as the building lasted, and the workmen were employed; but Abarbinel thinks that he gave it to him as long as he lived, out of his great munificence and liberality.
The Brenton translation of the Septuagint is in the public domain.