38 TITHING: THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD'S: it is holy unto the LORD. And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the fifth part thereof. And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the LORD. He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed (Lev. 27:30-33).
We come at long last to the final and shortest exposition in this commentary. The theocentric meaning of this passage is that God, as the owner of all things, deserves a tithe. The tithe is described here as being holy (kodesh). It was judicially set apart for God by the Levites. That is, the tithe was sanctified. The tithe was not under the ban (see below). We know this because the 20 percent redemption payment was present in this law. The Levites enjoyed the tithe as God's representatives.
In a purely monetary society, the redemption law of the tithe is irrelevant. No one is going to pay a 20 percent payment to buy back his monetary tithe. This law is relevant only in a society in which income in kind is common: income measured in something other than money. In such societies, goods are sometimes retained by their producers to be used or enjoyed for themselves, not sold into the market for money.
Why would someone pay a commission to redeem an object? Only if that object has special meaning or importance for him. If the quality of grain in a tithed sack is identical to the grain in the other nine sacks, the tithe-payer is not going to pay a commission to buy back the tithed sack. The assumption behind this law is that the impersonal collecting of the tithe may produce a personally significant loss for the tithe-payer. In order to enable him to minimize this loss, the law allows him to pay a 20 percent commission to buy back the special item.
There is no indication that this law has been annulled by subsequent biblical revelation. It applies only to agriculture, as the text indicates -- primarily to herds of animals.
A Tithe on the Net Increase The text reads: "And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the LORD. He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed." The tithe was collected from the increase of the herd. This increase was a net increase. If one animal of the herd had died since the time of the most recent payment of the tithe, the herd owner was allowed to set aside a replacement from the animals born since the last payment.(1) Had this not been the case, then losses from a disease that killed half a man's herd could not be deducted when assessing the net annual increase. This would constitute a tax on capital.
This law reveals that God gave the benefit of the doubt to the herd owner. An old beast that had died could lawfully be replaced by a young beast without the payment of a tithe. Presumably, this exchange would have benefited the owner, since the newborn animal would have had many years of productivity ahead of it. There would have been an increase of net productivity for the herd but not a net increase in the size of the herd. In some cases, however, the older beast would have been more valuable, especially a prize animal used for breeding or a trained work animal. God, as sovereign over life and death, imposes net losses or gains on a herd's productivity, irrespective of the number of beasts in the herd.
What was not tolerated by God was any attempt by the owner to pick and choose from among the newborns. The owner could not lawfully select the best of the newborns to replace the dead animals, using the less desirable newborns to pay his tithe, thereby cheating God. Presumably, the birth order of the newborns would govern the replacement of any dead beasts. The first newborn after the death of another member of the herd would have been segregated immediately from the other newborns as not being eligible for the tithe.
Under the Rod Those newborn beasts that remained after the owner had replaced any dead animals constituted the net increase of the herd. In this case law, the herd owner lined up the newborns, probably in a pen, and drove them one by one past the Levite. Each beast passed under a rod. Every tenth beast was taken by the Levite. The herd owner was not allowed to walk the beasts under the rod in any pre-planned order. The same law that governed the voluntary sanctification of beasts governed the involuntary sanctification of beasts: "He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy" (Lev. 27:10). The owner was allowed to buy back any sanctified beast, but only by paying the redemption price commission.
The herd owner was given the benefit of the doubt at the end of the line. Only the tenth beast was holy. If as many as nine of the final group of beasts passed under the rod, the herd owner owed no tithe on those nine beasts. Where the product could not be divided without destroying the life or value of the item, the tithe applied only to discrete items. All those animals that passed under the rod after the final group of 10 had been counted escaped the sanctification process.
Because God gave the benefit of the doubt to the tithe-payer, it was especially evil for him to arrange in advance the collection of the tithe, with or without the collusion of the Levite. The assembling process was to be humanly random. Neither the tithe-payer nor the Levite was to manipulate the crop or the herd to his own advantage, or to the other's advantage. God owned the tenth; He alone was authorized to arrange the collection process. Any attempt by man to arrange the process was not only theft from God, it was an assertion of man's autonomy. It was an attempt to manipulate the created order in a way prohibited by God.
The Ban What if a tithe-payer defied God and manipulated the tithe-collection process? The tithed items came under the ban: "if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed." The tithed item became hormah: devoted to God. This degree of sanctification was absolute; once within the boundaries of God's possession, it could not lawfully be removed.
Why would a person manipulate the outcome of the collection process? Because he was trying to cheat God. He was unwilling to risk paying the 20 percent commission that would be imposed if he subsequently wanted to buy back a specific item. What was the penalty for this act of theft? Permanent loss. The very process of altering the outcome made the tithe holy -- not holy as in sanctification, but holy as in devoted. The right of redemption ended.
There is no ban today -- no hormah. That is because the New Covenant has annulled the sacrifice of animals. This aspect of the law is also annulled.(2)
Conclusion The tithe was paid on the net increase of the herd. The owner of the herd paid his tithe only out of the newborn animals that remained after he had set aside replacement beasts for the ones that had died during the year. He was required to run the remaining newborns under a rod. He could not lawfully order the line of newborns so that the outcome of the tithe could be known in advance. The tenth beast became the property of the Levite. As in all cases of redemption, he could buy back that beast for a payment of its market value plus an additional payment of one-fifth.
If the owner violated this law by arranging the order of the beasts as they lined up, he could not buy back any of the animals. They became devoted to God -- beyond redemption.
There is no New Testament evidence that the economics of this law has been altered. The tithe on the increase of a herd should still be honored.
What about the rod? Was its use tied exclusively to the office of Levite? The association with Moses and the rod indicates that its use was in some way tied to the Mosaic covenant. Aaron's rod was in the Ark of the Covenant (Heb. 9:4), but the Ark has disappeared. My conclusion is that there need be no rod in the process, but there must be a random distribution of the herd during the tithing process. We are not allowed to cheat God. If a prize animal gets tagged for collection by the church, the owner can pay its market price plus 20 percent. The presumption is, however, that prize animals of breeding age will be segregated in advance. The tithe on the net increase in prize animals must come from the segregated herd of prize animals. Such segregation was not lawful in Mosaic Israel (Lev. 19:19).(3)
If, after counting everything owed, there are up to nine beasts left over, no tithe is imposed. God still gives herd owners the benefit of the doubt.
What about the ban? Today, we do not sacrifice animals to God. Thus, to place an animal under the ban is to misinterpret this law. The owner can buy back the beast at a market price, but probably at public auction. Then he pays an additional 20 percent to the church. No cheating is allowed; whatever he pays for the animal, and however he obtains it, he pays 20 percent of what the purchase price had been at the time of the auction or its initial sale by the church.
Summary This law still applies to agricultural productivity, especially herds.
The tithe is collected on net increase.
Newborn beasts can replace dead beasts on a one-for-one basis without any tithe's being owed.
Birth order determines which beasts replace dead beasts.
By implication, lost, stolen, or taxed crops can be replaced by new crops without any tithe's being owed.
Those newborn beasts that constituted net increase were to be selected randomly to pass under the Levite's rod.
The same principle applies: no deliberate tampering in advance with the herd.
Groups of animals within a species can lawfully be segregated today, with the tithe taken from within each group.
There is no tithe on the final nine members of the group.
There is no ban today: no sacrifice of animals, no hormah.
Footnotes:
1. This is the economic equivalent of allowing a farmer to set aside from this year's crop an amount equal to last year's seed. A person pays the tithe on net output only once. He does not keep paying on capital, i.e., replaced producer goods.
2. By extension, the law of the military annihilation of all enemy males is also annulled (Deut. 20:13): no hormah.
3. See Chapter 17: "The Preservation of the Seed."
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