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Acre

Acre

As used in the Scriptures, “acre” is understood to denote the measure of land that a span of bulls can plow in a day. The Hebrew word thus rendered (tseʹmedh) literally means “span” (1Sa 14:14, ftn; 1Ki 19:19) and is also rendered “couple” (Jg 19:3), “pair” (1Sa 11:7), and ‘team’ (2Ki 9:25). Likely the measure of land referred to was somewhat less than 0.4 ha (1 acre). The word iugerum, found in the Latin Vulgate, refers to an area of 0.25 ha (0.62 acre).