What Does Isaiah 5:10 Mean?
For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield an ephah.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah.THE KEY
A full homer of seed returns only one ephah, a tenth-sized harvest that makes the collapse measurable.
THE MEANING
A field can be wide and the measure of seed full while what comes back stays painfully small. Ten yokes of vineyard yield one bath; one homer of seed yields one ephah. The gap between input and fruit is a real form of constriction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a larger field or heavier sowing must guarantee a proportionate return.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow; the root joins the planted seed with the act of planting.
English separates the seed from the sowing, but Hebrew holds them in one root-family. The same root also names offspring, so the measure contains the potential for more life even as this harvest contracts.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To scatter or plant seed.
זָרַע
The seed in the verse is not detached from the act that put it into the ground; both belong to the same root.
zeraʿ: Seed, or the descendants that grow from it.
זֶרַע
The word can carry the promise of multiplication, making the tiny return feel like potential narrowed.
צִמְדֵי
tsimdei
GROWS FROM
צמד
ts-m-d
To join, bind, or pair; צֶמֶד names a pair or yoke.
“ten acres of vineyard” in this verse is tsimdei. The KJV’s “acres” hides a measure pictured through a yoke of oxen and the land it can plow. The verse counts ten such working measures, then sets their meager return beside them.
ALSO GROWS
tsemed: A joined pair; also a yoke of oxen and the area it plows.
צֶמֶד
The vineyard’s scale is measured through paired labor, not as an abstract expanse.
tsāmad: To be joined or attached.
צָמַד
The root’s image of things bound together echoes the yoke in the measure, while the yield remains painfully small.
THE PATTERN
When fruitfulness is constricted, plentiful sowing can yield only a fraction.
You shall bring out much seed into the field, and gather but little in; for the locust shall devour it.You have sown much and brought in little. You eat, but you are not filled. You drink, but you do not drink your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And the one who earns wages earns them into a pierced pouch.And the one sown among thorns is the one who hears the word; and the care of this age and the deceit of riches choke the word, and he becomes without fruit.THE THREAD
Then Isaac sowed in that land, and in that same year found a hundredfold, and the LORD blessed him.Isaiah’s “seed” and Genesis’s “sowed” share the Hebrew root זרע (zāraʿ, sow or seed), holding the planted thing and the act of planting in one word-family. Genesis shows that root bearing a hundredfold; beside it, Isaiah’s fraction makes the loss of fruitfulness stark.
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