Verse-by-Verse Bible CommentaryDeuteronomy 15:20
"You and your household shall eat it every year before the LORD your God in the place which the LORD chooses. Jump to: Clarke Commentary • Biblical Illustrator • Gill's Exposition • Wesley's Notes • Poole's Annotations • Ellicott's Commentary • Treasury of Knowledge Other Authors
Adam Clarke CommentaryThou shalt eat it - in the place which the Lord shall choose - Thus God in his mercy made their duty and interest go hand in hand. And in every case God acts thus with his creatures; well, therefore, might Satan ask, Doth Job serve God for naught? No! nor does God design that any man should. Copyright Statement Bibliography The Biblical IllustratorDeuteronomy 15:20 Eat it before the Lord thy God year by year. Memorial days “Year by year.” It might seem at first sight, antecedent to experience, a surprising thing that the mere mechanical movement of the earth through the heavens should have any special relationship to man’s mind and spirit. Yet we know that it has. Our memory associates special experiences with certain seasons and days. As the season or day returns the event is recalled, and sometimes the impressions awakened by it have, apparently, all their original sharpness. So, in this regard, the course of the heavens comes to be, as it were, a colossal memorandum book. 1. There is a sure evidence of the event seen in the fact of its commemoration. 2. We are taught how comparatively rare are these conspicuous and startling events which punctuate our public and private life. It is well for the sanity of the human mind that life is not filled with startling events. It would be like substituting pyrotechnics for the moonlight, or the stars for the silent skies. It is in the ordinary quiet on going of life that we find healthfulness of heart. 3. Life is always, serious. For we are ever treading on the edge of something unexpected, it may be something terrible. Let us walk circumspectly, and realise that we may always dwell under the shield of God’s providence and under the light of His promises. 4. We see the innate superiority of mind to all temporary events. You recall perhaps your wedding day, the hour, the place, the guests, the joy, through a score of years, a half century ago. Intervals of time fade from view in presence of this supreme experience, just as you look from one lofty peak to another and think not of field, valley, and river between. You see those shining points of life when you were at twenty, forty, or sixty years of age, and lesser experiences are hidden. The mind itself is superior to mere measurements of time, and so is constituted for immortality; is akin to Him to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday. 5. How deep in us is the element of affection which has its expression in the anniversary or festival. As we review the past our memory clings to those experiences in which the heart has a part, those which have touched its springs of joy and grief. We properly cultivate intellectual strength, power of will and endurance, but, after all, it is love that is supreme. Love brings us nearer Him who is perfect love. 6. A sweet illustration of the grace of God in the Gospel is furnished in the fact, with which every believer is familiar, that in these remembered events sorrow loses its sting and joy comes to be even more full in reminiscence than it was at first. Our sorrow only makes more glorious the preciousness and amplitude of Divine grace and sympathy, just as the glory of the sun, shot through a dark cloud, illumines and transfigures it by its splendour and its peace. 7. What a rest it is to the aged to recall the past when they are released from life’s active and strenuous struggles! They are like ships home from long voyages, moated in a quiet harbour, where the memory of storms that are past only enhances the serenity and peace enjoyed. 8. Whatever measurements may hereafter be had as to time and eternity in our immortal life, one thing is certain: we will keep one point in vivid remembrance--that of our entrance into life, when we first knew the joys eternal. (R. S. Storrs, D. D.)
Copyright Statement Bibliography John Gill's Exposition of the Whole BibleThou shalt eat it before the Lord thy God, year by year,.... Which, if understood of male firstlings, as in connection with the preceding verse, only priests might eat of them, being devoted to the Lord; so Jarchi says, to the priest he speaks; but if this respects the Israelites in common, then they must be understood either of female firstlings or second firstlings, which the people voluntarily separated, and which they were not to eat in their own houses: but in the place which the Lord shall choose, which was the city of Jerusalem; see Deuteronomy 12:5, thou and thy household; the household of the priest, as Aben Ezra interprets it; but if it designs the same as in Deuteronomy 12:17, then the Israelites and their families are meant. Copyright Statement Bibliography Wesley's Explanatory NotesThou shalt eat it before the LORD thy God year by year in the place which the LORD shall choose, thou and thy household. Year by year — Namely, in the solemn feasts which returned upon them every year. Copyright Statement Bibliography Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy BibleThou shalt eat; either, 1. Thou, O priest. Or rather, 2. Thou, O Israelite. For it is evident that the same person who was forbidden to work with these, Deuteronomy 15:19, is here commanded to eat them, &c. Thou shalt eat it, together with the Levites, as it is to be understood from Deuteronomy 12:18 14:27,29, where that is expressed in like cases. Year by year, to wit, in the solemn feasts which returned upon them every year. See Deuteronomy 16:11,14. Copyright Statement Bibliography Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(20) Thou shalt eat it before the Lord thy God year by year.—This connects the eating of the firstlings with the “second” tithe (Deuteronomy 14:23), There is some difficulty in understanding the exact relation between this precept and that which assigns the firstlings to the priests (Numbers 18:15) with the first tithe. The practical solution is to be sought in the practice of the Jews. One suggestion is (that of Rashi), that “thou shalt eat” in this place refers to the priest; another is, that the firstlings without blemish were for the priest; those that were not fit for sacrifice were for the household of the owner. But it is perfectly conceivable that there was a collection of firstlings at one time of the year for the first tithe, and these were given to the priests. At the time of the collection of the second tithe, there might, and generally would, be other firstlings born since, and these, with the second tithe, would be disposed of in the manner indicated in these verses. And this, upon the whole, seems the most probable explanation. If two tithes were a regular institution, they must have been regularly collected at fixed times. And there might easily be firstlings in both of them; in fact, there almost certainly would be. At any rate, no contradiction can be maintained as between laws which were both observed in practice by the Jews. It appears from the Talmud, that tithes and offerings might be presented, more or less, at any of the three great feasts. They would not all be presented at one time. The tithes and first-fruits in some cases were liable to be delayed. The rule was, that everything due for three years last past must be cleared out of the establishment, and paid over to the proper authorities at the Feast of the Passover in the fourth and eighth years reckoned by the Sabbatical system. (See Deuteronomy 26:12-13, for more on this head.) Copyright Statement Bibliography Treasury of Scripture KnowledgeThou shalt eat it before the LORD thy God year by year in the place which the LORD shall choose, thou and thy household.
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