# How was tithing "enforced" under the Mosaic law?



## Peairtach (Feb 8, 2012)

> "Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the LORD's; it is holy to the LORD. If a man wishes to redeem some of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it. And every tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman's staff, shall be holy to the LORD. One shall not differentiate between good or bad, neither shall he make a substitute for it; and if he does substitute for it, then both it and the substitute shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed." These are the commandments that the LORD commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai. (Leviticus 27:30-34, ESV)



How was tithing "enforced" under the Mosaic dispensation, if at all?


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## baron (Feb 8, 2012)

Read Malachi 3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

So I think God enforced it by laying it upon peoples hearts to bring in the tithe.


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## Peairtach (Feb 12, 2012)

It seems that the enforcement of tithing under the Mosaic law was relatively "soft touch". There was no crime of robbing God in the judicial law for which a penalty such a death, beating or restitution was prescribed. 

Commenting on Leviticus 27:30-33 


> Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the LORD's; it is holy to the LORD. If a man wishes to redeem some of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it. And every tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman's staff, shall be holy to the LORD. One shall not differentiate between good or bad, neither shall he make a substitute for it; and if he does substitute for it, then both it and the substitute shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed."



Calvin says:


> In these words God shows thatin assigning the tithes to the Levites, he ceded His own rights, inasmuch as they were a kind of royal revenue; and thus He bars all complaint, since otherwise the other tribes might have murmured on being unduly burdened. *he therefore appoints the priests as His receivers*, to collect in His name what could not be refused without impious and sacriligeous fraudulency. *In the provision that, where the tithes are redeemed by a money payment, a fifth part should be added to their value,the object is not that the Levites should make a gain of the loss of others; but because the owners of property craftily aimed at some advantage in this commutation of corn for money, frauds are thus prevented whereby something would be lost to the Levites by this deceptive exchange.* On the same grounds He commands that the animals, whatever they might be, should be given as tithe, and does not permit them to be redeemed by money, since, if the choice had been free, no fat or healthy animal would ever have come to the Levites. Therefore, in this law a remedy was applied to avarice and meanness, and not without good cause;for if the proverb be true, that "good laws spring from evil habits," it was necessary that so covetous and ill-disposed a people should be restrained in the path of duty by the utmost severity. And although such careful provision was made for the Levites, yet there was scarcely any period in which they did not suffer from want, and sometimes they wandered about half-starved; nay, after the return from Babylonish captivity, the memory of so great a blessing did not prevent a part of the tithes from being surreptitiously witheld from them, as God complains in Malachi 3:8. Whence it appears that it was not without purpose that the people were so imperiously enjoined to pay them.


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