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LXX Deuteronomy

Septuagint

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Chapter 26

1 And it shall be when you shall have entered into the land, which the Lord your God gives you to inherit it, and you shall have inherited it, and you shall have lived upon it, 2 that you shall take of the first of the fruits of your land, which the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put them into a basket, and you shall go to the place which the Lord your God shall choose to have his name called there. 3 And you shall come to the priest who shall be in those days, and you shall say to him, I testify this day to the Lord my God, that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give to us. 4 And the priest shall take the basket out of your hands, and shall set it before the altar of the Lord your God: 5 and you shall answer and say before the Lord your God, My father abandoned Syria, and went down into Egypt, and stayed there with a small number, and became there a mighty nation and a great and numerous multitude. 6 And the Egyptians afflicted us, and humbled us, and imposed hard tasks on us: 7 and we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our humiliation, and our labor, and our affliction. 8 And the Lord brought us out of Egypt himself with his great strength, and his mighty hand, and his high arm, and with great visions, and with signs, and with wonders. 9 And he brought us into this place, and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 And now, look, I have brought the first of the fruits of the land, which you gave me, Lord, a land flowing with milk and honey: and you shall leave it before the Lord your God, and you shall worship there before the Lord your God; 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. 14 And in my distress I did not eat of them, I have not gathered of them for an unclean purpose, I have not given of them to the dead; I have listened to the voice of the Lord my God, I have done as you have commanded me. 15 Look down from your holy house, from heaven, and bless your people Israel, and the land which you have given them, as you swore to our fathers, to give to us a land flowing with milk and honey. 16 On this day the Lord your God charged you to keep all the ordinances and judgments; and you shall observe and do them, with all your heart, and with all your soul. 17 You have chosen God this day to be your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to observe his ordinances and judgments, and to listen to his voice. 18 And the Lord has chosen you this day that you should be to him a people of his own, as he said to you, to keep all his commands; 19 and that you should be above all nations, as he has made you renowned, and a boast, and glorious, that you should be a holy people to the Lord your God, as he has spoken.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Deuteronomy 26:12 and Jubilees 32:9

Septuagint · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

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.

Passages

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.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Deuteronomy

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.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

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.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Deuteronomy 26:12 and Jubilees 32:9

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