At the end of every three years you shall bring all the tithe of your increase in the same year, and shall store it within your gates.
To set apart the tithe for the poor (maaser ani) in the third and sixth years
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
מִקְצֵה שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים תּוֹצִיא אֶת־כָּל־מַעְשַׂר תְּבוּאָתְךָ בַּשָּׁנָה הַהִוא וְהִנַּחְתָּ בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להוציא מעשר עני בכל שנה שלישית מהשמטה, ומהשלישית אשר אחר כל שלישית כלומר הששית שבכל השמטה גם כן, והוא אמרו יתברך מקצה שלש שנים תוציא וגו', וזה גם כן אינו חובה אלא בארץ ישראל מן התורה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת פאה ומעשרות וקצת שאלות מהם מפוזרות במקומות רבים משאר מסכתות זרעים ומסכת מכשירין וידים. (ראה אנכי, זרעים הלכות מתנות עניים פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us to extract the poor tithe every third year of the sabbatical [cycle], as well as the third year from every third year - meaning the sixth year of the sabbatical [cycle]. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "At the end of three years, you shall extract, etc." (Deuteronomy 14:28). But by Torah law, this too is only practiced in the Land of Israel. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractates Peah and Maaserot; and some of its issues are scattered in many place of the tractates of Zeraim and in Tractates Makhshirin and Yadayim. (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor 6.)
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 flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- 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 (tithe and priestly-due halakhah; not specific to the poor tithe) read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.131-144 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.240 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:23 reinterpreted it Jesus affirms tithing while subordinating it to 'justice, mercy, and faithfulness'
- Luke 11:42 reinterpreted it parallel critique of meticulous tithing divorced from justice and love of God
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:177 carried a parallel
- Q 9:60 carried a parallel
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.