Isn't 3 seah a lot of flour for three men?

The largest challah ever. Unless Sarah Imeinu baked larger ones.

Summary: A seah is an enormous amount of grain. 1 seah = 6 kav. 1 kav = 24 eggs. Therefore, 1 seah = 144 eggs. And 3 seah is 432 eggs. And Avraham told Sarah to take 3 seah of meal and flour to prepare ugot for the angels. Are they truly such gluttons?

Post: Here is the pasuk, the sixth from the start of Vayera:

6. And Abraham hastened to the tent to Sarah, and he said, "Hasten three seah of meal [and] fine flour; knead and make cakes."

ו. וַיְמַהֵר אַבְרָהָם הָאֹהֱלָה אֶל שָׂרָה וַיֹּאמֶר מַהֲרִי שְׁלֹשׁ סְאִים קֶמַח סֹלֶת לוּשִׁי וַעֲשִׂי עֻגוֹת:

Ramban and Baal HaTurim grapple with this question. Thus, Baal Haturim writes::

קמח סולת. פירוש  קמח  לעמילן  של  טבחים
 אע״פ  שפסח  היה ׳  לא  היה  בהם משום חמץ
 דהבל  אינו  מחמיץ .  ובב"ר  אית א  שהיה  שלש
 סאין  לכל  אחד, וכתב  הרמב״ן  למה  הרבה  בלחם
 לג' אנשים  ואפשר  שסעדו  עמהם  גדולי  ביתו
 כדי  לכבדם. אבל  על  דרך  הפשט  מהרי  שלש
 סאים קמח  לעשות  מהם  עוגות שהוציאה  מכל
 ג׳ הסאין  סולת נקיה  מעט :

While Midrash Rabba increases the astonishing amount to 9 seah, the Ramban grapples with the huge amount, and suggests that others ate with them in their honor, or that one should parse it as that she should take 3 seah of coarse flour and sift it to extract a far smaller amount of fine flour.

Ramban also suggests that אולי ידע הסתלקות המאכל ראשון ראשון, והוא כמרבה עולות למזבח. If I understand this correctly, then he is saying that Avraham was aware of the ethereal nature of his guests, and that they would then be able to 'eat' all of this, and it was like increasing burnt-offerings for the altar.

I could suggest that, since Avraham ate 74X as much as a normal person, as per the last brayta in Masechet Soferim, he estimated that each guest would eat that much as well. 144 / 74 ~= 2 eggs.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky associates it with a halachic concern:

מהרי שלש סאים קמח, עי׳ רמב״ן שתמה
 למה הי׳ צריך כ״כ הרבה פת לג׳ אנשים, וי"ל
 דהרי אברהם סבר שהיו ערביים ואסור לאפות
 ביו״ט לצורך גוי  (ובין למ״ד פסח הי׳ ביו למ״ד
 סוכות הי׳ יו״ט) אבל בגמ׳ ( ביצה  י״ז א׳) אמרי׳
 ממלאה אשה תנור פת בשביל שהפת נאפה יפה
 כשהתנור מלא ולכך הי׳ צריך הרבה פת
 שיתמלא התנור ויהא  מותר לאפות הכל.


After citing the Ramban's concern, he writes that "one could say that behold, Avraham thought that they were Arabs, and it is forbidden to bake on Yom Tov for the sake of a gentile (and this works either according to the opinion that it was Pesach or the opinion that it was Succot). {Josh: But not according to the position that it was erev Pesach.} But in the gemara (Beitza 17a) they say that a woman may fill an oven with bread in order that the bread {in general} will bake well, when the oven is full. And therefore he needed to increase a lot of bread, so that the oven would be permitted to bake all of it."

He also has a suggestion within Ramban's suggestion that there was sifting of the 3 seah down to a smaller amount:


מהרי שלש סאים קמח, כ׳ רמב״ן ג׳ סאה
 קמח להוציא מהן סלת נקי׳ וכ״כ בלקח טוב,
 ואכתי צריך טעם למה דוקא ג׳ סאין, וי"ל  ע״פ
 גמרא דמנחות ע״ו ב׳ דמחיטין ומישן עשרון
 מובחר אתי מסאה חיטין ובעירובין פ״ג ב׳
 מבואר דעשירית האיפה הוא מאכל אדם א׳ ליום
 ואמרי׳ האוכל במדה זו ה״ז בריא ומבורך ולכן
 י״ל שרצה שיהא לכל אחד מהמלאכים עשרון
 א׳, וה״ק ג׳ סאין, קמח הנעשה מחיטין ג׳ סאין
 להוציא מהן עשרץ סלת לכל א׳. ועי״ל שרצה
 לעשות דומיא דלחה״פ דניפו בי״א נפה עשרון
 מסאה כמ״ש במנחות שם אבל באדר״נ פי״ג אי׳
 שלקח ט׳ סאין ע״ש ולפ״ז י״ל שרצה לעשות
 דומיא דעומר שמנופה בי״ג נפה ויוצא עשרון
 מג׳ סאין כדאמרי׳ שם וכל מעשה אבות סימן
 לבנים.


Basically, an amount such that when it reached the smaller amount, there would be a full day's bread for each of them.

Shadal addresses the question and suggests that not all of it was for the meal:
שלש סאים: לא כולם לאכול מיד, אלא שיקחו להם לדרכם לצידה.

"Not that all of them would be eaten immediately, but rather that they would take it with them on the road as provisions."

Radak suggests that each would get a single loaf the size of a seah, and this enormous loaf was derech kavod.

I would try to solve this in another way. Who says we know what a seah is? Yes, in Mishnaic Hebrew it has a definition of 6 kav, but that does not mean that it must have that definition in Tanach. Or forget Tanach. The word seah only occurs once the entirety of Torah and that is here. Even if the other few scattered examples of seah in Nach do mean this large measure, there is no certitude that the seah measure did not change. Indeed, Gray points out that by the contest of Eliyahu and the prophets of Baal on Har HaCarmel, in I Melachim 18:

לב  וַיִּבְנֶה אֶת-הָאֲבָנִים מִזְבֵּחַ, בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה; וַיַּעַשׂ תְּעָלָה, כְּבֵית סָאתַיִם זֶרַע, סָבִיב, לַמִּזְבֵּחַ.

32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD; and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.

There is a disparity. A trench enough to plant 2 seah of seed, or Bet Satayim, is defined in the gemara as 100 cubits by 50 cubits. But then consider the next pesukim:

לד  וַיֹּאמֶר, מִלְאוּ אַרְבָּעָה כַדִּים מַיִם, וְיִצְקוּ עַל-הָעֹלָה, וְעַל-הָעֵצִים; וַיֹּאמֶר שְׁנוּ וַיִּשְׁנוּ, וַיֹּאמֶר שַׁלֵּשׁוּ וַיְשַׁלֵּשׁוּ.	34 And he said: 'Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the burnt-offering, and on the wood.' And he said: 'Do it the second time'; and they did it the second time. And he said: 'Do it the third time'; and they did it the third time.
לה  וַיֵּלְכוּ הַמַּיִם, סָבִיב לַמִּזְבֵּחַ; וְגַם אֶת-הַתְּעָלָה, מִלֵּא-מָיִם.	35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

The trench, 100 cubits X 500 cubits, filled with water, from just 4 jugs? Even if they were large jugs, and indeed poured out 3 times, that would not fill the trench!

Maybe, then, we are dealing with a smaller seah measurement.

Looking at Dr. Tawil's Akkadian Lexicon Companion for Biblical Hebrew Etymological, Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalence, I see the following. Besides the citation of Gray, he connect BH סאה to Akkadian sutu, and defines it as a measuring vessel. He writes:

In BH סְאָה, which contains one-third of an אֵיפָה, is attested nine time, in eight of which it connotes a measuring vessel (Gen 18:6, 1Sam 25:18, 2Kgs 7:1 (twice), 16, 18 (twice)). cf. Akka: shumma tamkarum she'am u kaspam ana chubullim iddinma inuma ana chubullim iddinu kaspam ina abnim matitim u she'am ina sutim matitim iddin, "if a merchant lends barley or silver, and when lending it he uses a small weight for the silver and a small sutu for the barley."

I changed the Akkadian to put in "sh" and "ch". But anyway, we see that there is a notion in Akkadian of a "small seah", as opposed to (presumably) a "large seah". So seah was not always the large seah. Say this, then, by Avraham and Sarah as well. He instructed her to measure out three small-measures, with the small seah, of fine flour. And how much is that. Presumably enough for the bread part of a meal for three guests (plus, perhaps, Avraham).