Isaiah 5:10
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For ten acres of vineyard will yield but a bath of wine, and a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.”
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
In this chapter the prophet, in God's name, shows the people of God their transgressions, even the house of Jacob their sins, and the judgments which were likely to be brought upon them for their sins, I. By a parable, under the similitude of an unfruitful vineyard, representing the great favours God had bestowed upon them, their disappointing his expectations from them, and the ruin they had thereby deserved (Isa 5:1-7). II. By an enumeration of the sins that did abound among them, with a threatening of punishments that should answer to the sins. 1. Covetousness, and greediness of worldly wealth, which shall be punished with famine (Isa 5:8-10) 2. Rioting, revelling, and drunkenness (Isa 5:11, Isa 5:12, Isa 5:22, Isa 5:23), which shall be punished with captivity and all the miseries that attend it (Isa 5:13-17). 3. Presumption in sin, and defying the justice of God (Isa 5:18, Isa 5:19). 4. Confounding the distinctions between virtue and vice, and so undermining the principles of religion (Isa 5:20). 5. Self-conceit (Isa 5:21). 6. Perverting justice, for which, and the other instances of reigning wickedness among them, a great and general desolation in threatened, which should lay all waste (Isa 5:24, Isa 5:25), and which should be effected by a foreign invasion (Isa 5:26-30), referring perhaps to the havoc made not long after by Sennacherib's army.
Open source ↗5:10 As with drought (5:5-6), the reduction of crops was at times a divine judgment (see Hag 1:6, 9; 2:16).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
from that time, when one came expecting a heap of twenty ephahs of grain, there were but ten. When one came to the winepress to draw out fifty baths, there were but twenty.
You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never get warm. You earn wages to put into a bag pierced through.”
If a man consecrates to the LORD a parcel of his land, then your valuation shall be proportional to the seed required for it—fifty shekels of silver for every homer of barley seed.
The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.