Isaiah 5:8

WOE TO THE GREEDY AND THE SELFISH

"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land! In mine ears saith Jehovah of hosts, of a truth many houses shall be left desolate, even great and fair without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah."

The insatiable desire of men to own more and more is the direct and certain result of a gross materialism in the heart. God here promises a judgment upon such ambitious concentrations of wealth and power.

"In mine ears ..." This is a reference to Isaiah's hearing the voice of God conveying to him the words God would have him deliver to the people.

"Acres ..." The literal Hebrew word here is "yokes," being a reference to "the amount of ground that two strong oxen could plow in a day."[6]

God's judgment upon the natural environment of greedy and selfish societies is shown in the prophecy here of a terrible drought in which a homer of seed shall yield only an ephah of grain. The severity of this is indicated by the fact that an ephah is only the tenth part of a homer. Thus the harvest would be cut to a disastrously low percentage of the seed sown.