Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1385

 the custom of the Jews themselves, have been so fully met by Hengstenberg (Dissertations, ii. 334ff.), that Riehm has nothing to adduce in reply, except the assertion that in Deut 18, where the revenues of the priests and Levites are given, there is nothing said about the tithe, and the tithe of the tithe, and also that the people would have been overburdened by a second tithe. But, apart from the fact that argumenta e silentio generally do not prove much, the first assertion rests upon the erroneous assumption that in Deut 18 all the revenues of the priests are given separately; whereas Moses confines himself to this general summary of the revenues of the priests and Levites enumerated singly in Num 18, “The firings of Jehovah shall be the inheritance of the tribe of Levi, these they shall eat,” and then urges upon the people in Num 18:3-5 an addition to the revenues already established. The second objection is refuted by history. For if in later times, when the people of Israel had to pay very considerable taxes to the foreign kings under whose rule they were living, they could give a second tenth of the fruits of the ground in addition to the priests' tithe, as we may see from Tobit 1:7, such a tax could not have been too grievous a burden for the nation in the time of its independence; to say nothing of the fact that this second tenth belonged in great part to the donors themselves, since it was consumed in sacrificial meals, to which only poor and needy persons were invited, and therefore could not be regarded as an actual tax. “The heave-offerings of your hand,” which are mentioned again in Mal 3:8 along with the tithes, are not to be restricted to the first-fruits, as we may see from Eze 20:40, where the terumoth are mentioned along with the first-fruits. We should rather understand them as being free gifts of love, which were consecrated to the Lord in addition to the legal first-fruits and tithes without being actual sacrifices, and which were then applied to sacrificial meals. - The other gifts were (3) נדרים and נדבות, sacrifices which were offered partly in consequence of vows and partly of their own free will (see at Lev 23:38, compared with Lev 7:16; Lev 22:21, and Num 15:3; Num 29:39); and lastly (4), “firstlings of your herds and of your flocks,” viz., those commanded in Exo 13:2, Exo 13:12., and Num 18:15. According to Exo 13:15, the Israelites were to sacrifice the firstlings to the Lord; and according to Num 13:8. they belonged to the holy gifts, which the Lord assigned to the priests for their maintenance, with the more precise instructions in Deu 12:17, Deu 12:18, that the first-born of oxen, sheep, and goats were not to be redeemed, but being holy were to be burned upon the altar in the same manner as the shelamim, and that the flesh was to belong to the priests, like the wave-breast and right leg of the shelamim. These last words, it is true, are not to be understood as signifying that the only portions of the flesh of the firstlings which were to be given to the priest were the wave-breast and heave-leg, and that the remainder of the flesh was to be left to the offerer to be applied