Deuteronomy 14:29

And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(29) And the Levite.—Rashi says, “the Levite shall come and take the first tithe (described in Numbers 18), and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow the second tithe.” But there is no proof whatever that anything except the second tithe is alluded to in the whole of this passage. The Levite always shared with the poor (see Deuteronomy 16:11; Deuteronomy 16:14). Rashi’s opinion is worth notice chiefly for the following reason. Some modern critics insist that the Law of Deuteronomy is contradictory to that of Numbers in respect of tithe; but if the Jews, who kept the whole Law strictly, not only saw no discrepancy between its several precepts, but actually took the precept in Deuteronomy to imply the precept in Numbers, why should we go out of our way to make difficulties now? If the precepts were harmonious and compatible, why should they be the work of different men? It is hardly likely that a whole nation would consent to pay double tithes, and acknowledge the obligation to do so by perpetual enactment, if the laws that commanded the tithe were contradictory. And the more closely we look at the subject, the more clearly will the distinction between the first and second tithes appear. The first was only an ordinary rate for the support of the Levitical ministry. No sacredness attached to it. The second was a tithe taken for Jehovah, “that thou mayest learn to fear Jehovah thy God always” (Deuteronomy 14:23). The tithe was either to be a joyful feast for the family, or a special gift to God’s poor. It furnished a table spread by the God of Israel for the entertainment of His guests. Why this should be confused with the ordinary rate for the maintenance of the Levitical ministry, it is not easy to understand.

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 14:29. The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow — For this tithe was not to be spent merely in feasting themselves, but for the relief of such as were in want, who otherwise might have been compelled to beg, or to serve strangers, and thereby be in danger of being perverted from their religion.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

14:22-29 A second portion from the produce of their land was required. The whole appointment evidently was against the covetousness, distrust, and selfishness of the human heart. It promoted friendliness, liberality, and cheerfulness, and raised a fund for the relief of the poor. They were taught that their worldly portion was most comfortably enjoyed, when shared with their brethren who were in want. If we thus serve God, and do good with what we have, it is promised that the Lord our God will bless us in all the works of our land. The blessing of God is all to our outward prosperity; and without that blessing, the work of our hands will bring nothing to pass. The blessing descends upon the working hand. Expect not that God should bless thee in thy idleness and love of ease. And it descends upon the giving hand. He who thus scatters, certainly increases; and to be free and generous in the support of religion, and any good work, is the surest and safest way of thriving.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Compare the marginal references. The tithe thus directed in the third year to be dispensed in charity at home, was not paid in addition to that in other years bestowed on the sacred meals, but was substituted for it. The three years would count from the sabbatical year (see the next chapter), in which year there would of course be neither payment of tithe nor celebration of the feasts at the sanctuary. In the third year and sixth year of the septennial cycle the feasts would be superseded by the private hospitality enjoined in these verses.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

28, 29. At the end of three years … the Levite … shall come, &c.—The Levites having no inheritance like the other tribes, the Israelites were not to forget them, but honestly to tithe their increase [Nu 18:24]. Besides the tenth of all the land produce, they had forty-eight cities, with the surrounding grounds [Nu 35:7], "the best of the land," and a certain proportion of the sacrifices as their allotted perquisites. They had, therefore, if not an affluent, yet a comfortable and independent, fund for their support.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the Levite, because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,.... Shall come and take the first tithe, according to Jarchi; but though this he was to do, yet is not what is intended here, but he was to partake of the second tithe, or what was in the room of it, the poor's tithe, with whom he is here joined:

and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come; and take the second tithe, as the above writer rightly interprets it, and which he says is the poor's of this year; see Deuteronomy 12:12,

and shall eat and be satisfied; make a plentiful meal, eat freely as at a feast; and, as the same writer observes, they were not obliged to eat it at Jerusalem, according to the way they were bound to eat the second tithe of the two years, that is, the two preceding this:

that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest; as might be expected, when his commands, and particularly those respecting the tithes and firstlings, were obeyed.

Geneva Study Bible

And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

29. the Levite] because he is landless and through the abolition of the local shrines has been deprived of his means of subsistence, and of—

the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow] for they also are landless. D frequently emphasises the duty of caring for them, Deuteronomy 16:11; Deuteronomy 16:14, Deuteronomy 24:17; Deuteronomy 24:19 ff., Deuteronomy 26:12 f.

shall eat and be satisfied] Here the words before Jehovah and rejoice, used in connection with the eating of tithes at the Sanctuary, are omitted; for this is not like that, a festal celebration. On the contrary the third year tithe is designed for the common daily sustenance of those poor persons. This secularisation of the tithe (as it would be called to-day) is interesting; see Additional Note.

that the Lord thy God may bless thee] Deuteronomy 26:15. Such devotion of the tithe to the poor is a condition of the increase of the crop from which it is made.

Additional Note on Tithes

According to 1 Samuel 8:15; 1 Samuel 8:17, a king if granted to Israel would be expected—in conformity with the practice of several ancient monarchies—to exact a tithe of his subjects’ cereal crops, vines, olives, herds and flocks. No religious offering under the name of tithe appears in the earlier legislation, the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26), or Ezekiel. Yet all these require an offering of the firstfruits of the soil:—E, Exodus 22:29 (28), thou shalt not delay thy fulness nor thy trickling (see Driver’s note), LXX firstfruits of thy threshing-floor and wine-press, like D’s law of tithes associated with firstlings, Exodus 22:30 (29); H, Leviticus 23:11 demands merely a sheaf of the firstfruits (reshîth) of harvest; Ezekiel 20:40, I will require your contributions (terumôth) and the firstfruits (reshîth) of your oblations. In the 8th century tithes were offered on the 3rd day of the feast at the royal sanctuary at Bethel (Amos 4:4 : see Wellh.’s note); and E, Genesis 28:22 ascribes to Jacob at the same sanctuary the promise to God to tithe all He would give him.

From these data several inferences have been drawn:—(1) that the tithes of D and the later legislation (see below) were the same as the first-fruits (reshîth and bikkurim) of the earlier (Nowack, Hebr. Arch. ii. 257 ff.), cp. the synonymousness of ἀπαρχαί and δεκάται, Dion Halic. i. 23 f. and Philo’s ἀπαρχῆς ἀπαρχή for the priests’ tithe of the Levites’ tithe in P (De Mut. Nom. 1607, Mangey); (2) that the same offering was called firstfruits at some sanctuaries, tithes at others (Now., G. F. Moore, E.B. art. ‘Tithes’ § 1); (3) that tithes is the later name (W. R. Smith, Rel. Sem. 226 ff.); (4) that the use of this name at Bethel, a royal sanctuary, was due to the appropriation of the king’s tithe to the support of the shrine, the result of Phoenician influence in N. Israel, for the earliest reference to a religious tithe is Phoenician (ibid.); (5) that these tithes were the material of a feast for not only the offerers but all the worshippers, including the poor, whose rights to them were sometimes cruelly absorbed by the rich (ibid.). What is sure is that from the time of their settlement Israel shared the belief of many primitive peoples (Frazer, Golden Bough2, ii. 459) that they might not enjoy their harvests till they offered the Deity some of the firstfruits. This was done at the local sanctuaries and became the occasion of a joyful feast, in which the officiating priest, the poor and all who had gêr, or guest, rights at the sanctuary would share. At some places these offerings were called tithes, either because it was found to be necessary to fix their proportion to the whole harvest, or because the royal tithe was actually appropriated to the support of the sanctuary and the solemn entertainment of the worshipping guests.

The tithe-laws of D imply that some such custom prevailed at the rural sanctuaries; but like many others it had to be adapted to D’s law of One Sanctuary. This was done by dividing the tithe between religious and charitable uses. Two years out of three the Israelite farmer must take the tithe, either in kind or in money, to the one sanctuary and (that he might learn to fear God) eat it there before God, with his household and the Levite, who by the abolition of his shrine had lost his opportunity of eating before God. But this deprived both the latter and the other landless poor of their rights in what had included benefactions for them all. Therefore every third year (see on 28 f.) all the tithe was to be stored and reserved for their sustenance, without any religious rites, either in the offering of it (except the prayer Deuteronomy 26:12 ff.), or in their enjoyment of it (note the omission in 28 f. of eating before Jehovah). Some think indeed that this third year tithe is the oldest element in D’s law and in fact had been the only real tithe (cp. the expression the year of tithing; Deuteronomy 26:12). But all that is older in it is the right of the Levite and the poor and the gçrîm to a share of the annual tithes offered at the local sanctuaries. When these were disestablished and the purely religious interests involved in the tithe could only be satisfied at the One Sanctuary, D compensated the rural Levites and the poor by granting them the whole of the third year’s tithe.

In P the tithe-law, Numbers 18:21-32, is very different. All the tithe in Israel, the tithe of the children of Israel which they offer as a contribution to Jehovah is given as an inheritance to the landless Levites, for the service which they serve, even the service of the tent of the meeting, the central sanctuary, and they in turn are to give a tithe of this tithe to Aaron the priest. And this was that part of the law of God given by Moses and sworn to by the people under Nehemiah, according to which they were to bring in the tithes of their ground to the Levites—the Levites take the tithes in all the townships of our tillage—and the Levites were to bring the tithe of their tithe to the house of God (Nehemiah 10:37 f.). These injunctions are irreconcileable with those of D. The tithe, which in D is enjoyed by the offerers, by the Levites of the rural sanctuaries, and by the poor and the gçrîm, is in P the inheritance of the Levites at the central sanctuary. D and P represent not, only differing practices, but incompatible principles of practice. Which is the earlier of the two? It is of course possible to argue that the original disposition of the tithe was purely religious or ecclesiastical and that D represents a later and more liberal spirit, which extended the enjoyment of it to the laity. But the converse is far more probable in view of that steady increase of all the priests’ establishments and revenues—with the consequent encroachments on the rights of the people—which is so fully illustrated in the historical Books. For an interesting and suggestive discussion of the problems arising from this subject see ‘The Deuteronomic Tithe’ by Prof. J. M. Powis Smith in The Amer. Journ. of Theology, January, 1914.

Deuteronomy 14:29

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Every third year, on the other hand, they were to separate the whole of the tithe from the year's produce ("bring forth," sc., from the granary), and leaven it in their gates (i.e., their towns), and feed the Levites, the strangers, and the widows and orphans with it. They were not to take it to the sanctuary, therefore; but according to Deuteronomy 26:12., after bringing it out, were to make confession to the Lord of what they had done, and pray for His blessing. "At the end of three years:" i.e., when the third year, namely the civil year, which closed with the harvest (see at Exodus 23:16), had come to an end. This regulation as to the time was founded upon the observance of the sabbatical year, as we may see from Deuteronomy 15:1, where the seventh year is no other than the sabbatical year. Twice, therefore, within the period of a sabbatical year, namely in the third and sixth years, the tithe set apart for a sacrificial meal was not to be eaten at the sanctuary, but to be used in the different towns of the land in providing festal meals for those who had no possessions, viz., the Levites, strangers, widows, and orphans. Consequently this tithe cannot properly be called the "third tithe," as it is by many of the Rabbins, but rather the "poor tithe," as it was simply in the way of applying it that it differed from the "second" (see Hottinger, de decimies, exerc. viii. pp. 182ff., and my Archol. i. p. 339). As an encouragement to carry out these instructions, Moses closes in Deuteronomy 14:29 with an allusion to the divine blessing which would follow their observance.