TITHING by Ruth E. Evans

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jan 24, 1906

TITHING.

By Ruth E. Evans

THERE are some duties which the Bible seems to recognize as understood from the beginning. There is no mention of their origin and first announcement. Their violation, or their performance, is mentioned incidentally long before they are recorded as specifically enjoined. It appears to be taken for granted that they were known to be duties at man’s very start in the world.

There is no command to pray or praise—either public or private prayer—in any of the earlier books of the Bible; but most of the patriarchs whose histories are elaborated, are represented as being in the habit of prayer. Altho the duty of prayer is not specifically enjoined in the Ten Commandments, it was and is recognized as of universal obligation.

The duty of tithe-giving—giving one-tenth of one’s income to the Lord—is one of these duties which seem not to have needed the record of an original announcement, or injunction. Like prayer, tithe-giving was practised by the patriarchs long before the proclamation of the Mosaic law. While, as in the case of prayer, it finds no specific mention in the Decalogue, tithe-giving has had a wide-spread recognition in the world, a recognition that would be as nearly universal as that given to prayer, if it were not that it costs so much more.

The first Bible mention of tithes is in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, where Abram, returning from the slaughter of the five kings, was met by Melchizedek, a “priest of the Most High God,” and he gave him tithes of all the spoils. It does not appear by the record that that act on Abram’s part was something unlike anything ever done before. On the contrary, it appears to have been the spontaneous performance of a recognized duty; for Abram did not count those spoils of the battle his own; he looked at them as belonging to the king of Sodom; but whosoever they were, Abram was the then steward of all, and knowing that one-tenth belonged to the Lord, he handed it over to the Lord’s representative.

The duty of tithe-giving would, therefore, seem to be the common law of God’s kingdom; yet there is no lack in the Bible of specific commands for this duty, or of denunciations of those who neglect it. We have found this duty recognized in the first book of the Old Testament.

Later we find specific and repeated commands for its continued exercise. In the last book of the Old Testament, we find its neglect denounced of God as nothing short of robbery.

“Will a man rob God?” He asks. Is there a man bad enough to deliberately steal from God? That is God’s question; and His answer to it is: “Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee?—In tithes and offerings.” Mal. 3:6–8. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house.” In plain words, then, if any church-member, or any who profess to be the Lord’s children, have failed to pay over to the Lord the tenth of their income, such are thieves and robbers. That is the plain Bible teaching on this subject.

One can not properly make offerings out of the tithe, for the reason that the tithe does not belong to him. The giving to one’s own family, or giving to any one who is properly dependent on us for support, is not giving to the Lord. The Jews never counted the cost of their personal or family sacrifices at the temple as a part of their tithe-giving. Nor did they count their alms-giving tithe-paying, yet alms-giving was always a sacred duty with the Jews.

Their alms-giving could not begin until the tithes were first provided for. One’s charities must be given out of that which is his own, not out of that which belongs to another.

Who, then, can suppose that the New Testament commands to give systematically and freely are intended, or were understood, as meaning less than that required of the less favored people of former times? It is absurd to suggest such a thought. “Freely ye have received, freely give.” RUTH E. EVANS.