Ten acres. — The disproportion was as great as that which we have seen in recent times in vine countries suffering from the Phylloxera or the oidium, or in the potato failures of Ireland. The bath was equal to seventy-two Roman sextarii (Jos. Ant. viii. 2-9), about seven and a half gallons, and this was to be the whole produce of ten acres, from which an average yield of 500 baths might have been expected. The Hebrew word for “acre” means primarily the ground that could be ploughed in a day by a yoke of oxen.
The seed of an homer shall yield an ephah. — Here also there is an all but total failure. The homer was a dry measure of thirty-two pecks, and the ephah was equal to one-tenth of a homer (Ezekiel 45:11; Exodus 16:36). This scanty crop — Ruth’s gleanings for a single day (Ruth 2:17) — one-tenth of the seed sown, was to take the place of the “thirtyfold, sixty, and a hundredfold” (Genesis 26:12; Matthew 13:8) of average or prosperous years.