a tithe: a tenth of one's crops or livestock set apart for God, and given to support the priests and the temple.
At its simplest this word means a tenth, but in the Bible it almost always names a religious obligation: the tenth of the harvest and the herd that belonged to God. The land itself was understood to be God's, so handing over a tenth of what it produced was a way of acknowledging the true owner and supporting the people set apart to serve at the sanctuary.
The tithe shows up in several different settings, and the laws describing it do not all line up neatly. One law sets apart a tenth of grain, fruit, oxen, and sheep as holy to God, with the livestock tithe chosen by counting off every tenth animal as it passed by. Another law hands the whole tithe to the Levites, the landless tribe who served at the sanctuary, and then requires the Levites to give a tenth of what they received to the priests. A third set of laws, in Deuteronomy, has worshipers eat their tithe in a festive meal at the central place of worship, and every third year store it up in their towns for Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows who had no land of their own.
Scholars debate at length whether these are three separate tithes meant to operate together, or one institution described in different periods and from different angles. The later Jewish tradition combined them into a system of multiple tithes; many modern historians read them instead as stages in the life of a single, evolving custom. Either way the word itself keeps a steady core: a tenth owed to God. By the time of the prophets and the return from exile, the tithe had become the financial backbone of the temple, collected into storehouses, and a stinging test of whether the people were keeping faith with God.
A rarer use is the one-time, voluntary tithe given as a thank-offering rather than as a standing duty, the kind Abram gave from the spoils of battle.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the tithe laws of Leviticus 27, Numbers 18, and Deuteronomy 12 to 26 describe one tithe legislated differently over time or several distinct tithes designed from the start to operate together.
- majorityThey are competing versions of one institution from different historical sources and periods: a voluntary early tithe, then Deuteronomy's festal and charitable tithe, then the Priestly tithe assigned to Levites and priests.; Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1885), ch. V; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (1972); Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (1996); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, Anchor Yale Bible 3B (2001)
- minorityThe laws are complementary descriptions of a single coherent system, viewed from different angles (the people's duty in Deuteronomy, the priests' and Levites' due in Numbers), and can be harmonized, as the later Jewish tradition did into a scheme of multiple tithes.; J. Gordon McConville, Law and Theology in Deuteronomy, JSOTSup 33 (1984); Richard E. Averbeck, "מעשׂר," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE) 2:1035-1055