Dt. 14: Food and Tithes

Deuteronomy 14:2 "...for you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the LORD has chosen you to be his treasured possession."

There must have been some cultural thing that the Israelites were witness to that involved cutting the hair for the dead. Leviticus has rules against cutting for the dead. Is this a command to forget the dead, or to pay them no special remembrance? Is it more of that idea of separation of Israel from the world. Other cultures were apparently, at any rate, creeping into the Israelite way of life. Pervasive this must have been, as it warranted a specific command not to do it. Maybe it was a fashion thing. It would look goofy to shave the front of your head, anyway. And if anyone knows fashion, it's Moses.

The rest of the first half of Deuteronomy 14 is almost a word-for-word reminder of Leviticus 11. Here's what I thought the first time around. You can feed already dead carcass to an alien living among you, but you can't eat it yourself. Why? Israel was separate and holy...aliens were not.

The second half is about tithing, covered previously in Leviticus 27, and discussed here. What an interesting way of offering advice to people who would have to travel a long distance in order to offer their tithes. Some people lived way out in the middle of nowhere, and God's tabernacle was quite a distance. The advice then is to sell the tithe for silver, and redeem the silver to buy what was sold to begin with, and then offer that as a tithe. This makes me wonder about the economics of that, and the business systems that sprang up as a result of this advice. I'd want to sell people stuff and jack up the price. After all, they came with no tithe, and only silver. Perfect for a shark like myself. If I were an Israelite. If I hated God. If I lived a million years ago. Of course I'm kidding, but that was my first reaction. How did they maintain 100% value?

Every three years, the tithes went to the Levites and charity...the aliens, fatherless and widows. Everyone was to come, eat, and be satisfied. God offers a blessing in the work of their hands when there is tithing, and helping out the po' folk.