Firstfruits and tithes
26
📚And it must be like this when you have come in to the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, and possess it and live in it: 2 📚take some of the first of all the produce of the ground which you bring in from your land that the LORD your God gives you, and put it in a basket and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses to put his name there. 3 📚And go to the priest who will be there in those days, and say to him, “I declare today to the LORD your God, that I have come to the country which the LORD swore to our fathers to give us”. 4 📚And the priest shall take the basket from your hand, and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God. 5 📚And you shall speak and say before the LORD your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean 📖, and he went down into Egypt 📖, and stayed there with a few persons and there became a great, strong and populous nation. 6 📚And the Egyptians mistreated us and afflicted us and imposed hard labour on us. 7 📚And when we cried out to the LORD God of our fathers, the LORD heard our voice, and looked on our affliction and our labour and our oppression, 8 📚and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terror, and with signs and with wonders. 9 📚And he has brought us into this place, and has given us this land, a land that flows with milk and honey. 10 📚And now, see, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which you, O LORD, have given me”. And you shall set it before the LORD your God, and worship in the presence of the LORD your God; 11 📚and you shall rejoice in every good thing which the LORD your God has given to you, and to your household, you, and the Levite, and the foreigner who is among you. 12 📚When you have finished tithing all the tithes of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, and have given it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat inside your gates and be satisfied, 13 📚then you shall say before the LORD your God, “I have brought the consecrated things from my house, and given them to the Levite, and to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, in accordance with all your commandments which you have commanded me. I have not broken your commandments, and I have not forgotten them. 14 📚I have not eaten any of the consecrated things in my time of mourning, and I have not taken away any of them for any unclean use or given any of them for the dead, but I have listened to the voice of the LORD my God and have done everything just as you have commanded me. 15 📚Look down from your holy dwelling place, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the land which you have given us, just as you swore to our fathers, a land that flows with milk and honey”.
26:15 God could justly bless the people and the land only when He saw their righteous behavior.⚜
16 📚This day the LORD your God has commanded you to do according to these statutes and judgments. Therefore you must keep and do according to them with all your heart and with all your soul. 17 📚Today you have declared that the LORD is your God, and that you will walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments, and listen to his voice. 18 📚And today the LORD has declared that you are his special people, just as he promised you, and that you must keep all his commandments, 19 📚and that he will set you high in praise, and in name and in honour above all nations which he has made, and that you must be a holy people for the LORD your God, just as he has said.