(Note: The arguments employed by De Wette and Vater against this arrangement with regard to the vegetable tithe, which is established beyond all question by the custom of the Jews themselves, have been so fully met by Hengstenberg (Dissertations, ii. 334ff.), that Riehm has nothing to adduce in reply, except the assertion that in Deuteronomy 18, where the revenues of the priests and Levites are given, there is nothing said about the tithe, and the tithe of the tithe, and also that the people would have been overburdened by a second tithe. But, apart from the fact that argumenta e silentio generally do not prove much, the first assertion rests upon the erroneous assumption that in Deuteronomy 18 all the revenues of the priests are given separately; whereas Moses confines himself to this general summary of the revenues of the priests and Levites enumerated singly in Numbers 18, "The firings of Jehovah shall be the inheritance of the tribe of Levi, these they shall eat," and then urges upon the people in Numbers 18:3-5 an addition to the revenues already established. The second objection is refuted by history. For if in later times, when the people of Israel had to pay very considerable taxes to the foreign kings under whose rule they were living, they could give a second tenth of the fruits of the ground in addition to the priests' tithe, as we may see from Tobit 1:7, such a tax could not have been too grievous a burden for the nation in the time of its independence; to say nothing of the fact that this second tenth belonged in great part to the donors themselves, since it was consumed in sacrificial meals, to which only poor and needy persons were invited, and therefore could not be regarded as an actual tax.)

"The heave-offerings of your hand," which are mentioned again in Malachi 3:8 along with the tithes, are not to be restricted to the first-fruits, as we may see from Ezekiel 20:40, where the terumoth are mentioned along with the first-fruits. We should rather understand them as being free gifts of love, which were consecrated to the Lord in addition to the legal first-fruits and tithes without being actual sacrifices, and which were then applied to sacrificial meals. - The other gifts were (3) נדרים and נדבות, sacrifices which were offered partly in consequence of vows and partly of their own free will (see at Leviticus 23:38, compared with Leviticus 7:16; Leviticus 22:21, and Numbers 15:3; Numbers 29:39); and lastly (4), "firstlings of your herds and of your flocks," viz., those commanded in Exodus 13:2, Exodus 13:12., and Numbers 18:15.

According to Exodus 13:15, the Israelites were to sacrifice the firstlings to the Lord; and according to Numbers 13:8. they belonged to the holy gifts, which the Lord assigned to the priests for their maintenance, with the more precise instructions in Deuteronomy 12:17, Deuteronomy 12:18, that the first-born of oxen, sheep, and goats were not to be redeemed, but being holy were to be burned upon the altar in the same manner as the shelamim, and that the flesh was to belong to the priests, like the wave-breast and right leg of the shelamim. These last words, it is true, are not to be understood as signifying that the only portions of the flesh of the firstlings which were to be given to the priest were the wave-breast and heave-leg, and that the remainder of the flesh was to be left to the offerer to be applied to a sacrificial meal (Hengstenberg); but they state most unequivocally that the priest was to apply the flesh to a sacrificial meal, like the wave-breast and heave-leg of all the peace-offerings, which the priest was not even allowed to consume with his own family at home, like ordinary flesh, but to which the instructions given for all the sacrificial meals were applicable, namely, that "whoever was clean in the priest's family" might eat of it (Numbers 18:11), and that the flesh was to be eaten on the day when the sacrifice was offered (Leviticus 7:15), or at the latest on the following morning, as in the case of the votive offering (Leviticus 7:16), and that whatever was left was to be burnt. These instructions concerning the flesh of the firstlings to be offered to the Lord no more prohibit the priest from allowing the persons who presented the firstlings to take part in the sacrificial meals, or handing over to them some portion of the flesh which belonged to himself to hold a sacrificial meal, than any other law does; on the contrary, the duty of doing this was made very plain by the fact that the presentation of firstlings is described as ליהוה זבח in Exodus 13:15, in the very first of the general instructions for their sanctification, since even in the patriarchal times the זבח was always connected with a sacrificial meal in which the offerer participated. Consequently it cannot be shown that there is any contradiction between Deuteronomy and the earlier laws with regard to the appropriation of the first-born. The command to bring the firstlings of the sacrificial animal, like all the rest of the sacrifices, to the place of His sanctuary which the Lord would choose, and to hold sacrificial meals there with the tithes of corn, new wine, and oil, and also with the firstlings of the flocks, and herds, is given not merely to the laity of Israel, but to the whole of the people, including the priests and Levites, without the distinction between the tribe of Levi and the other tribes, established in the earlier laws, being even altered, much less abrogated. The Israelites were to bring all their sacrificial gifts to the place of the sanctuary to be chosen by the Lord, and there, not in all their towns, they were to eat their votive and free-will offerings in sacrificial meals. This, and only this, is what Moses commands the people both here in Deuteronomy 12:7 and Deuteronomy 12:17, Deuteronomy 12:18, and also in Deuteronomy 14:22. and Deuteronomy 15:19.

(Note: If, therefore, the supposed discrepancies between the law of Deuteronomy and that of Exodus and Leviticus concerning the tithes and firstlings vanish into mere appearance when the passages in Deuteronomy are correctly explained, the conclusions to which Riehm comes (pp. 43ff.), - viz., that in Deuteronomy the tithes and firstlings are no longer the property of the priests and Levites, and that all the laws concerning the redemption and sale of them are abrogated there-are groundless assertions, founded upon the unproved and unfounded assumption, that Deuteronomy was intended to contain a repetition of the whole of the earlier law.)

"Rejoice in all that your hand has acquired." The phrase יד משׁלח (cf. Deuteronomy 12:18; Deuteronomy 15:10; Deuteronomy 23:21; Deuteronomy 28:8, Deuteronomy 28:20) signifies that to which the hand is stretched out, that which a man undertakes (synonymous with מעשׂה), and also what a man acquires by his activity: hence Isaiah 11:14, יד משׁלוח, what a man appropriates to himself with his hand, or takes possession of. אשׁר before בּרכך is dependent upon ידכם משׁלה, and בּרך is construed with a double accusative, as in Genesis 49:25. The reason for these instructions is given in Deuteronomy 12:8, Deuteronomy 12:9, namely, that this had not hitherto taken place, but that up to this day every one had done what he thought right, because they had not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord was about to give them. The phrase, "whatsoever is right in his own eyes," is applied to actions performed according to a man's own judgment, rather than according to the standard of objective right and the law of God (cf. Judges 17:6; Judges 21:25). The reference is probably not so much to open idolatry, which was actually practised, according to Leviticus 17:7; Numbers 25:1; Ezekiel 20:16-17; Amos 5:25-26, as to acts of illegality, for which some excuse might be found in the circumstances in which they were placed when wandering through the desert, - such, for example, as the omission of the daily sacrifice when the tabernacle was not set up, and others of a similar kind.