<strong>ACRE</strong> (ā'kêr, Heb. <em>tsemedh</em>). In both occurrences of this word (<bibleref ref="1Sam.14.14">1Sam.14.14</bibleref>; <bibleref ref="Isa.5.10">Isa.5.10</bibleref>) the area involved is the average amount a “yoke” (<em>tsemedh</em>) of oxen could plow in a day. What actual area is involved is not known, and the translation “acre” is merely conventional.<br /><br />

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<strong>ACRE</strong>. <em>See</em> [[Acco]]; [[Weights and Measures]].<br /><br />

<h2>International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)</h2>

A term of land-measurement used twice in the English versions of the Bible (<bibleref ref="Isa.5.10">Isa 5:10</bibleref>; <bibleref ref="1Sam.14.14">1Sa 14:14</bibleref>), and said to be the only term in square measure found in the <span class="auto-link">[[Old Testament]]</span>. The English word "acre" originally signified field. Then it came to denote the measure of land that an ox team could plow in a day, and upon the basis of a maximum acre of this kind the standard acre of 160 square rods (with variations in different regions) was fixed. The Hebrew word translated acre denotes a yoke of animals, in the sense of a team, a span, a pair; it is never used to denote the yoke by which the team are coupled together. The phrase `ten yokes of vineyard’ (<bibleref ref="Isa.5.10">Isa 5:10</bibleref>) may naturally mean vineyard covering as much land as a team would plow in ten days, though other plausible meanings can also be suggested. In <bibleref ref="1Sam.14.14">1Sa 14:14</bibleref> the same word is used in describing the limits of space within which Jonathan and his armor-bearer slew twenty Philistines. The translation of the <span class="auto-link">[[Revised Version]]</span> (British and American), "within as it were half a furrow’s length in an acre of land," means, strictly, that they were slain along a line from two to twenty rods in length. The word rendered "furrow," used only here and in <bibleref ref="Ps.129.3">Ps 129:3</bibleref>, is in Brown’s Hebrew Lexicon defined as "plowing-ground." This gives the rendering "as it were in half a plowing-stint, a yoke of ground," the last two phrases defining each the other, so that the meaning is substantially that of the paraphrase in the <span class="auto-link">[[King James Version]]</span>. There is here an alleged obscurity and uncertainty in the text, but it is not such as to affect either the translation or the nature of the event.<br /><br />

Willis J. Beecher<br /><br />

Acre