The title of this blog was the exact phrase I put into my AI assistant for today’s blog.
(Yes, I use AI as a research assistant. No, it’s not my only reference source. Yes, I fact-check everything it tells me. No, it doesn’t write these blogs. Yes, I talk to it politely because I’m paranoid that when robots rise up and take over the world, they’ll target me for speaking to them rudely. Sue me.)
The reason I was confused was that there seem to be so many tithes in the Old Testament. I have no idea how any of them keep it straight. There are three that I know of: that of the Levite (Numbers 18:21-24); the festival (Deuteronomy 14:22-27); and this one, for the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29; 26:12-15).
Since this specific tithe has already been discussed earlier, why is God bringing it up again? We know that every three years, everyone puts a tithe into the storehouse for specific use by the poor. Why do we need to declare anything extra, as Deuteronomy 26 says?
There is a simple answer and a long answer.
Simply put, the Israelite must declare that their tithe is clean because there’s really no other way to check whether or not the tithe is pure. God knows, to be sure, but there’s not a Jewish Agricultural Purity-Enforcement Division that stalks farms and makes sure people don’t offer unauthorized tithes.
So, in one way, the farmer is simply affirming to the world (and to God) that what he’s offering to the poor is safe and clean.
The longer answer is that it shows a desire for holiness in every part of Israel’s life, not just in what they offer to the sanctuary.
If you were to offer something to the Temple, for instance, it would be purified by the priest. That was their job.
But if you offered it to the poor-tithe, there wasn’t anyone around to purify it before the poor took it. One might lazily decide to just toss it in the pot (if they did it at all), throw their hands up, and say it doesn’t matter.
It does matter, though. Your desire to offer the best and the pure in service to your fellow man should be equal to your desire to offer the best and pure in service to your God. Just because nobody’s around to double-check your work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care.
To stretch that into today’s world, there are a lot of things that people will “pass off” without any regard to whether or not it’s actually holy. We’ll mutter through worship. Pray half-hearted, distracted prayers. Tell people about God out of a sense of duty rather than love.
But God knows not only that we do those things, but how we do those things.
When Israel offered their poor tithes, they affirmed to God and to each other that what they were offering was holy.
Do we do the same?