all the good, etc., points to the joy connected with the sacrificial meal, which followed the act of worship (as in Deu 12:12). The presentation of the first-fruits took place, no doubt, on their pilgrimages to the sanctuary at the three yearly festivals (ch. 16); but it is quite without ground that Riehm restricts these words to the sacrificial meals to be prepared from the tithes, as if they had been the only sacrificial meals (see at Deu 18:3).
verses 12-13
The delivery of the tithes, like the presentation of the first-fruits, was also to be sanctified by prayer before the Lord. It is true that only a prayer after taking the second tithe in the third year is commanded here; but that is simply because this tithe was appropriated everywhere throughout the land to festal meals for the poor and destitute (Deu 14:28), when prayer before the Lord would not follow per analogiam from the previous injunction concerning the presentation of first-fruits, as it would in the case of the tithes with which sacrificial meals were prepared at the sanctuary (Deu 14:22.). לעשׂר is the infinitive Hiphil for להעשׂר, as in Neh 10:39 (on this form, vid., Ges. §53, 3 Anm. 2 and 7, and Ew. §131, b. and 244, b.). “Saying before the Lord” does not denote prayer in the sanctuary (at the tabernacle), but, as in Gen 27:7, simply prayer before God the omnipresent One, who is enthroned in heaven (Deu 26:15), and blesses His people from above from His holy habitation. The declaration of having fulfilled the commandments of God refers primarily to the directions concerning the tithes, and was such a rendering of an account as springs from the consciousness that a man very easily transgresses the commandments of God, and has nothing in common with the blindness of pharisaic self-righteousness “I have cleaned out the holy out of my house:” the holy is that which is sanctified to God, that which belongs to the Lord and His servants, as in Lev 21:22. בּער signifies not only to remove, but to clean out, wipe out. That which was sanctified to God appeared as a debt, which was to be wiped out of a man's house (Schultz).
verses 14-15
“I have not eaten thereof in my sorrow.” אני, from און, tribulation, distress, signifies here in all probability mourning, and judging from what follows, mourning for the dead, equivalent to “in a mourning condition,” i.e., in a state of legal (Levitical) uncleanness; so that בּאני really corresponded to the בּטמא which follows, except that טמא includes every kind of legal uncleanness. “I have removed nothing thereof as unclean,” i.e., while in the state of an unclean person. Not only not eaten of any, but not removed any of it from the house, carried
