Bible Commentaries
Deuteronomy 14

Verse 1

Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

Of the Lord — Whom therefore you must not disparage by unworthy or unbecoming practices.

Ye shall not cut yourselves — Which were the practices of idolaters, both in the worship of their idols, in their funerals, and upon occasion of public calamities. Is not this like a parent’s charge to his little children, playing with knives, "Do not cut yourselves!" This is, the intention of those commands, which obliges us to deny ourselves. The meaning is, Do yourselves no harm! And as this also is, the design of cross providences, to remove from us those things by which we are in danger of doing ourselves harm.

Verse 3

Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

Abominable — Unclean and forbidden by me, which therefore should be abominable to you.

Verse 22

Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.

All the increase — This is to be understood of the second tithes, which seem to be the same with the tithes of the first year, mentioned Deuteronomy 14:28.

Verse 25

Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose:

In thine hand — That is, in a bag to be taken into thy hand and carried with thee.

Verse 27

And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.

Thou shalt not forsake him — Thou shalt give him a share in such tithes or in the product of them.

Verse 28

At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates:

At the end of three years — That is, in the third year, as it is, expressed, Deuteronomy 26:12.

The same year — This is added to shew that he speaks of the third year, and not of the fourth year, as some might conjecture from the phrase, at the end of three years.