“After you have separated a tenth of the crops yielded in the third year, the year of separating a tenth, and have given it to the Levi, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, so that they can have enough food to satisfy them while staying with you.”-Deuteronomy 26:12
Verse 12 of Deuteronomy Chapter 26 introduces us to what came to be known as the…
“poor-tithe”.
How it worked was that every third year a common Israelite’s tithe was set aside in their local village for the support of the poor.
Again, this tithe was just one out of the several different kinds of tithes required.
The purpose of this poor-tithe was to use it to restock the warehouses for the poor, needy and foreigners to draw from in order to ensure their survival.
So instead of the usual procedures in which the first fruits were taken to the temple and feasted on in the presence of Adonai, the worshipper would instead donate those first fruits he would normally have eaten as a “poor-tithe”.
Now there’s something interesting concerning the distribution schedule of this tithe you should know about.
Israel operated under a Sabbatical Year system, right?
In other words, they operated under a system of 7-year rolling cycles.
Because of this, the distribution of the poor-tithe occurred within a 7-year cycle as follows:
The 3rd Year the first poor-tithe was given.
The 6th Year the second poor-tithe was given.
The 7th Sabbatical year was NOT counted since this was the year when no crops were grown nor were first fruits given to the temple (or anyone for that matter).
What happened was that four years later in the 3rd year of the following 7-year cycle the poor tithe was given.
So the poor-tithe was 3-years, 3-years, and 4-years.
This meant that after giving the poor-tithe in year number 6 within the 7-year cycle, the next poor tithe would not be due until 4 years later on year 3 of the next 7-year cycle.
I’m done.
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