The Tithe God Commanded

An Old-Testament Survey

Before we can ask if Christians are commanded to tithe, we need to answer a simpler, more uncomfortable question: What exactly did God command Israel to tithe?

When the Law defines the tithe, it describes:

• the tenth part of agricultural produce from the land,
• every tenth livestock from within Israel's covenant life in the land.

It does not define the tithe as:

• money itself, or
• a tenth of wages or earned income.

"All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the trees, is the LORD'S; it is holy unto the LORD."^[1]

This may seem almost too simple to emphasize so strongly, but it is worth underscoring:

• in the Law's core descriptions, the tithe is not framed as money, or as a tenth of wages and earned increase.

In God's tithe instructions, money is mentioned only twice (see below)—and in both scenarios, the money is not presented as the tithe itself.

A tenth of crops and herds—and only every tenth

The biblical tithe, as defined in the Law, is agricultural.^[1:1][2] The text is surprisingly concrete:

• It was from the seed of the land and the fruit of the trees.^[1:2]
• It applied to every tenth animal that passes under the rod.^[2:1]
  • The farmer did not choose which animal to give; he simply counted as they walked by, and the tenth animal belonged to the LORD.
  • Because only "every tenth" animal was included, a man with nine sheep tithed none; with nineteen, he tithed one.
  • The Law never describes rounding up, nor "the first ten percent of everything." It describes a counted tenth, not a floating percentage applied to all wealth.
• The Law never commands a tithe on non-agricultural wages or trade income.
  • In other words, the command is stated in terms of land-produce and herd increase, not in terms of wages from every kind of work.

All of this already looks very different from, "Take ten percent off the top of your paycheck and put it in an envelope."

Three tithes woven into Israel's life

When we zoom out across the Law, we don't just find one simple tithe, but a pattern of tithes woven through Israel's covenant life:

1. The Levitical tithe (for priestly support).
   God gave no land inheritance to the tribe of Levi. Instead, the tithe of the other tribes was their inheritance: "And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation."^[4]

   The people brought a tenth of their produce to the Levites, and the Levites themselves tithed a tenth of that up to the priests.^[5] Notably, the tithe is repeatedly called "their inheritance," in contrast to land.^[4:1]

2. The festival tithe (for worship and rejoicing).
   Deuteronomy describes another tithe that the Israelite family was to eat in the presence of the LORD: "Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God… the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks…"^[6]

3. The third-year tithe (for the poor and the Levite).
   Every third year, Israel was instructed: "At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates: And the Levite… and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow… shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied…"^[8]

   This "year of tithing"^[9] created a local store for Levites and the vulnerable—in the towns, not only at the sanctuary.

When you put these together over a three-year cycle, some estimates suggest that an obedient Israelite farmer could give considerably more than ten percent of his agricultural increase over time. At minimum, it is clear that the tithe was not a simple, one-size-fits-all "10% rule" for every Israelite, but a structured system embedded in Israel's worship, priesthood, and care for the poor, funded by the land's agricultural increase.

And there were years with no sowing and reaping at all—the sabbatical years, when the land rested and ordinary agricultural production stopped: "Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land…"^[10]

No crops meant no harvest—and no regular tithe. Every tithe was the "tenth part" of "the increase" from their grain, corn, wine, oil, and cattle.

Money appears only as a 20% surcharge when someone buys back their produce, or as a temporary stand-in for the tithe on the way to a feast. The Law does not frame wages as a tithe category.

Within Israel's borders, for Israel's Levites

Another crucial detail: the tithe laws are repeatedly tied to "the land that the LORD is giving you".^[11][12] The tithe applied to produce that the land itself brought forth under God's blessing. It was part of Israel's covenant life in the Promised Land.

• Tithes were taken "of the land" and from "the field that the LORD giveth thee."^[1:3][11:1]
• God gave the Levites specific towns scattered throughout Israel instead of a tribal territory,^[13] and the tithes supported them as they served.^[4:2]
• The third-year tithe is explicitly stored "within thy gates" for local Levites and the poor.^[8:1]

In other words, the command is consistently framed in terms of Israel's land, Israel's increase, and Israel's Levites. Scripture never states a tithe requirement in terms of "ten percent of all wages for all people in all places."

The "storehouse" and where the tithe actually went

By the time of Hezekiah and Nehemiah, we see the practical outworking of these commands:

• King Hezekiah commanded the people to give "the portion of the priests and the Levites," and they brought "the tithe of all things abundantly." Great heaps of grain, wine, oil, and livestock were gathered, and store chambers were prepared in the house of the LORD to receive them.^[14]
• In Nehemiah's day, they appointed overseers of the storehouses "for the offerings, for the firstfruits, and for the tithes, to gather into them out of the fields of the cities the portions of the law for the priests and Levites."^[15] Those storehouses held the tithe-of-the-tithe brought up from the Levitical towns.^[16]

To put it plainly:

• The "storehouse" in Malachi's day was a set of temple rooms used to store grain, wine, oil, and other offerings, so "there may be meat in mine house."^[17]
• The bulk of the produce-tithe supported Levites in their towns; only a portion was brought up to the temple as their tithe.

So when we hear, "The church budget is the storehouse, and your paycheck tithe keeps food in God's house," we should at least pause. Biblically, the storehouse was literal storage space for literal food, given to a specific covenant tribe under a specific covenant system.

What this should tell us

None of this is an argument against giving. And so far, we haven't touched the New Testament yet. It is simply an honest look at what God actually commanded when He commanded tithes.

• The tithe was agricultural, not industrial. The Law does not frame wages as a tithe category.
• It was tied to the land of Israel, not to every believer in every nation. The command is repeatedly grounded in "the land the LORD gives you."
• It was paid to Levites, not to whomever happened to be in local ministry. Jesus and the Apostles did not collect tithes.
• It was structured into multiple tithes to feed priests, your family at festivals, and the poor—not a flat ten percent rule from every individual's income.
• And it was administered in granaries and town stores, not in weekly envelopes on padded chairs.

If that picture feels wildly different from what you've heard preached, that tension is important. It means that, before we ever get to Malachi 3 and "robbing God," we have to ask a more basic question:

Are we actually talking about the same tithe God was?

Now that the term is defined, we can ask: what do the apostles command?

FOOTNOTES: