Deuteronomy 14:28

Summary

Deuteronomy 14:28 instructs that at the end of every three-year cycle, all the tithe of that year's produce is to be brought out and deposited within the towns (gates) of the community, rather than transported to a central sanctuary as in other tithe laws.

Key words

• k.Tzeh ("end of", H7097A) — masculine singular construct, marking the temporal boundary "from the end of" a period, establishing the three-year cycle.
• to.Tzi' ("you will bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, second person masculine: an ongoing/future obligation to actively bring the tithe out (of storage or fields).
• ma'.Sar ("tithe of", H4643) — masculine singular construct, linking to te.vu.'A.te.kha ("your produce"), specifying that the tithe is calculated from agricultural yield.
• hi.nach.Ta ("you will deposit [it]", H5117) — hiphil sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by to.Tzi'; the sequential form ties this action as the direct consequence of the first.
• sh.'a.Rei.kha ("your gates", H8179H + suffix) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix, denoting the local town settlements (the "gates" being a common Hebrew idiom for the town/city itself).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a two-part sequence using the narrative vav (ve, H9001) to link two hiphil verb forms: to.Tzi' (imperfect) followed by hi.nach.Ta (sequential perfect). This grammatical pairing presents the action as a single continuous procedure — first bringing out the tithe, then depositing it — rather than two separate commands. The temporal phrase mi-k.Tzeh sha.Losh sha.Nim ("from the end of three years") uses the construct chain to indicate a recurring cycle, not a single fixed year.

The object of the action is defined through a chain of construct nouns: kol ("all") + ma'.Sar ("tithe of") + te.vu.'A.tekha ("your produce"), each word linked in a genitive-like relationship that narrows down what exactly is tithed — the entirety of one's produce-based tithe for that specific year, marked by the demonstrative ha-Hiv' ("that"). The final destination, bi-sh.'a.Rei.kha ("in your gates"), uses the plural construct noun for "gates" with a second-person suffix, indicating local town storage rather than a distant location.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the opening temporal phrase as Anno tertio ("in the third year"), a simplified singular reference, where the Hebrew mi-k.Tzeh sha.Losh sha.Nim more literally indicates "from the end of three years," emphasizing the completion of a recurring cycle rather than a single ordinal year. The LXX text supplied here corresponds in content to material about the Levite, foreigner, orphan, and widow — matter found in the following verse (v. 29) rather than a rendering of v. 28 itself; the Greek text given does not parallel the Hebrew wording of this verse.