of permanent duration. It is true that this word is separated by an athnach from the previous clause; but it certainly cannot be connected with תדרשׁוּ (ye shall seek), not only because of the standing phrase, שׁם שׁמו לשׁכּן (“to cause His name to dwell there,” Deu 12:11; Deu 14:23; Deu 16:2, Deu 16:6, etc.), but also because this connection would give no fitting sense, as the infinitive שׁכן does not mean “a dwelling-place.”
verses 6-9
Thither they were to take all their sacrificial gifts, and there they were to celebrate their sacrificial meals. The gifts are classified in four pairs: (1) the sacrifices intended for the altar, burnt-offerings and slain-offerings being particularly mentioned as the two principal kinds, with which, according to Num 15:4., meat-offerings and drink-offerings were to be associated; (2) “your tithes and every heave-offering of your hand.” By the tithes we are to understand the tithes of field-produce and cattle, commanded in Lev 27:30-33 and Num 18:21-24, which were to be brought to the sanctuary because they were to be offered to the Lord, as was the case under Hezekiah (2Ch 31:5-7). That the tithes mentioned here should be restricted to vegetable tithes (of corn, new wine, and oil), is neither allowed by the general character of the expression, nor required by the context. For instance, although, according to Deu 12:7 and Deu 12:11, Deu 12:12, as compared with Deu 12:17, a portion of the vegetable tithe was to be applied to the sacrificial meals, there is no ground whatever for supposing that all the sacrifices and consecrated gifts mentioned in Deu 12:6 were offerings of this kind, and either served as sacrificial meals, or had such meals connected with them. Burnt-offerings, for example, were not associated in any way with the sacrificial meals. The difficulty, or as some suppose “the impossibility,” of delivering all the tithes from every part of the land at the place of the sanctuary, does not warrant us in departing from the simple meaning of Moses' words in the verse before us. The arrangement permitted in Deu 14:24-25, with reference to the so-called second tithe, - viz., that if the sanctuary was too far off, the tithe might be sold at home, and whatever was required for the sacrificial meals might be bought at the place of the sanctuary with the money so obtained, - might possibly have been also adopted in the case of the other tithe. At all events, the fact that no reference is made to such cases as these does not warrant us in assuming the opposite. As the institution of tithes generally did not originate with the law of Moses, but is presupposed as a traditional and well-known custom, - all that is done being to define them more precisely, and regulate
