“ ‘All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is Yahweh’s. It is holy to Yahweh.
To set apart the first tithe (maaser rishon) for the Levites
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכָל־מַעְשַׂר הָאָרֶץ מִזֶּרַע הָאָרֶץ מִפְּרִי הָעֵץ לַיהוָה הוּא קֹדֶשׁ לַיהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להוציא מעשר מצמח הארץ, והוא אמרו יתברך וכל מעשר הארץ לה'. וכבר באר הכתוב שהמעשר הזה ללוים. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת מעשרות, והוא הנקרא מעשר ראשון ואינה חובה מן התורה אלא בארץ. (אם בחקותי, הלכות מעשר פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to extract the tithe from agricultural produce. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "All tithes from the land [...] are the Lord's" (Leviticus 27:30). And the verse already explains that this tithe is for the Levites; and the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Maaserot. And it is what is called the first tithe. But by Torah law, it is only practiced in the Land [of Israel]. (See Parashat Bechukotai; Mishneh Torah, Tithes 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
- Binding in the land of Israel
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 4QMMT B 62-64 The catalog describes this reception as: disputed
- 11QTemple 60:6-9 reinterpreted it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 70:7 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.156-157 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.68 affirmed it
- Antiquities 4.205 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:23 affirmed it tithing of mint, dill, cumin affirms the tithe obligation in general (not specifically the Levitical recipient) within a polemical critique of Pharisaic priorities; the saying is commonly assigned to Q on the standard two-source reconstruction (cf. Luke 11:42)
- Luke 18:12 carried a parallel Pharisee's claim to tithe all he acquires, presented critically
- Hebrews 7:5-9 reinterpreted it Levitical tithe used typologically to subordinate Levi to Melchizedek/Christ
The Church Fathers
- Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.18.1-2 reinterpreted it
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.