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Jubilees presents Jacob’s tithe at Bethel as a basis for a second tithe, a practice also described in the Greek Septuagint translation of Deuteronomy. This harmonizes distinct requirements for tithing, distantly related to later Rabbinic traditions.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Deuteronomy 26:12
Septuagint
11 and you shall rejoice in all the good things, which the Lord your God has given you, you and your family, and the Levite, and the stranger that is within you. 12 And when you shall have completed all the tithings of your fruits in the third year, you shall give the second tenth to the Levite, and stranger, and fatherless, and widow; and they shall eat it in your cities, and be filled. 13 And you shall say before the Lord your God, I have fully collected the holy things out of my house, and I have given them to the Levite, and the stranger, and the orphan, and the widow, according to all commands which you commanded me: I did not transgress your command, and I did not forget it.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 32:9
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
8 And he tithed all the clean animals, and made a burnt sacrifice, but the unclean animals he gave (not) to Levi his son, and he gave him all the people. 9 And Levi performed the priest's duties at Bethel before Jacob his father rather than his ten brothers, and he was a priest there, and Jacob gave his vow: thus he tithed again the tithe to the Lord and sanctified it, and it became holy to Him. 10 And for this reason it is ordained on the heavenly tablets as a commandment for the tithing again the tithe to eat before the Lord from year to year, in the place where it is chosen that His name should reside, and to this commandment there is no limit of days forever.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The Interpolator saw in the mention here of Jacob’s payment of a tithe at Bethel an opportunity to discourse on the institution of a second tithe, neglected by (or unknown to) Jubilees’ author. Thus, once Jacob gave what he had vowed, namely, a tenth of his property, he again gave a tithe to the Lord. The whole idea of a second tithe is the result of trying to reconcile the apparently contradictory instructions of Numbers 18:21, 24 and Deuteronomy 14:22-29. The Interpolator shares with rabbinic Judaism the basic idea that there is a “second tithe,” but his understanding of its nature is different from that of the rabbis ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 153.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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