If you grew up in church, you probably remember a situation like the following: you are sitting in vacation bible school eating your goldfish crackers when the teacher begins reading Genesis 6. If you grew up in a place where they read from the King James, the familiar Noahic flood narrative read like this: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." -Genesis 6:14-16 (KJV) That's when the little hands started shooting up. "What is a cubit?" The bible school teacher would then awkwardly explain the conversion ratio of a cubit to a inches. Unfortunately, most of us have had to hear that explanation again and again. One of the many small but important steps that the HCSB has made to make it a translation that is accessible to 21st Century readers has to do with this issue. In many places, the HCSB converts ancient units of measure like cubits, spans, and gomedhs to centimeters, inches, and feet. Even though our ancient brothers an sisters didn't use the same measurements we do today, we can still get an accurate picture of what the biblical authors are telling us. There is a profound reason Scripture contains detailed information about the dimensions of the Temple, for example: God wanted us to understand the beauty and breadth of his story. The HCSB attempts to translate these details from the original texts with accuracy so that every time that we read the Bible we don't have to ask, "What is a cubit?" Our hope is that the HCSB removes any hindrances to a natural reading of the text.