1 Samuel 14:14

The English word acre in the King James Version translates the Hebrew semed (צֶמֶד) — literally yoke, pair, or team of oxen. By extension, semed names the amount of land a yoked pair of oxen could plow in a single day — an agricultural measure that varied with terrain and tools but was roughly equivalent to half a modern acre, or about a fifth of a hectare. The word appears as a land measure only twice in scripture. In **1 Samuel 14:14**, Jonathan and his armorbearer slaughter about twenty Philistines within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plow — the narrator embedding the unit's definition for readers unfamiliar with the term. In **Isaiah 5:10*, in the song of the unfaithful vineyard, the LORD warns that ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath (about six gallons) — a catastrophe of barrenness, expressed in the same agricultural units the failing kingdom had used to measure its prosperity. Modern translations vary in how they render semed. The BSB renders it yoke in both verses; the NIV uses acres* in Isaiah 5:10 and half-acre in 1 Samuel 14:14; the ESV uses acres in Isaiah 5:10 and half a furrow's length in 1 Samuel 14:14 (following a different interpretive tradition). The modern English acre is a convenient but inexact gloss for an ancient unit whose exact value depended on the terrain a team of oxen could turn in a day. Not to be confused with the city of Acre — the modern English name for the Mediterranean port called Acco in the Old Testament and Ptolemais in the New. See the Acco entry for that city's history. The two names are unrelated: the city-name comes from the Crusader-era Latinization of the Greek Akke, while the agricultural unit is a Hebrew word entirely.

• Isaiah 5