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82 YEHOVAH’s Tithe in Scripture

To these persons were given several cities and their suburbs wherein to live; but their ap-
pointed means of support was a tithe of the increase of the land and of cattle, with other offerings of
the people. No other opportunity of obtaining a livelihood remained to them; for the tribe or Levi
was not reckoned when the land was divided. Regard, therefore, for the maintenance of the law,
such as we have seen exemplified from time to time by the whole nation, to say nothing of civil ad-
vantages brought to the people by the Levites, forbid us to think that the people, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, defrauded the Levites of the portion assigned them by YEHOVAH God.

We may further observe that the law of Moses not only proved practicable, but, so far as
tithes and religious offerings are concerned, we do not find it complained of as burdensome or op-
pressive — not even when, to pay Persian tribute, the people had mortgaged their lands, Nehemiah
5:3-4.

Nor do we read, during all the centuries in which tithe-paying was observed as a working in-
stitution, of any request being made that the tithe should be repealed or lessened. Even the heretical
Jeroboam (if we rightly understand the words of Amos, see p. 67) does not appear to have abolished
the payment of tithes for religious purposes.

Later on, when the people fell away to the worship of false gods, or were oppressed under a
foreign yoke, we see how, in their times of humiliation, they took upon themselves afresh to ob-
serve the law of Moses, including tithes, always reverting to the Pentateuch as their standard of
right living, but never questioning their obligation as to religious payments in general, or the pro-
portion prescribed. It seems clear, indeed, that some of the people did not come up to the required
standard during the reign of the wicked Ahaz, nor about the time of the return from captivity, when
Malachi reproved such defaulters as “robbers of God.” But these episodes seem to have been excep-
tions, and not the general rule.

Putting together, therefore, what we have thus far learned of our subject, we conclude that as
secular history tells of other nations, such as the Babylonians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans,
dedicating a tenth of their income and spoils to their gods, so the people of Israel, from their settle-
ment in Canaan to the end of the period covered by the Old Testament, did likewise; the proportion
payable by the Israelite, being a tenth applied to the use of the ministers of the sanctuary, and other
tenths and offerings as prescribed by the law of the Pentateuch.

Tithing in the Apocrypha

We now proceed (in the next three chapters) to the study of tithe-paying and religious benef-
icence as taught and practiced in Palestine during the period between the Old and New Testaments;
taking as our sources of information the Apocrypha and the Talmud.

Whatever may be thought, theologically, of the doctrinal authority of the books of the
Apocrypha, their antiquity and oriental authorship make them valuable as illustrating the ideas and
customs of the period of which they are historical documents. Bearing this in mind, we proceed to
search therein for passages concerning tithes, first fruits, and religious offerings, as well as for ex-
amples of, and exhortations to, private beneficence generally. The books giving us most informa-
tion on our subject are Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees.

The Berean Voice July-August 2002