Exodus 22:29

Thou shall not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits,.... Which, according to Maimonides (k), were of seven kinds only; for he says, "they do not bring the firstfruits, but of the seven kinds,

Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors.

Thou shalt not delay beyond the times appointed, lest this delay grow to a total neglect. And delay may here be put for neglect, as that word is used, 23:21 ; which may seem to be favoured by the following clause, which commands the giving or offering of the first-born without any mention of the hastening or delaying of it. Thy ripe fruits, Heb thy fulness; and whereas this word is sometimes applied to seed or corn, as , and sometimes to the vintage, as , the circumstances must determine, as it doth in like cases, how it must be taken; which here seem to restrain it to dry fruits, as corn, &c., because it is opposed to liquors; and so all sorts of fruits are comprehended here. Unless you will make this a usual figure called hendyadis, as judgment and justice, , is put for judgment of justice, or just judgment; so here the fulness and liquors, for the fulness of thy liquors; and so this may be one kind mentioned for all the rest, than which nothing more frequent. Shalt thou give unto me, not in kind, but by a price of redemption to be paid to me in their stead.

Exodus 22:29 Thou shalt not delay [to offer] the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.Ver. 29. Theft shalt not delay.] True obedience is prompt and present, ready and speedy, without demurs and consults. "Wings, and wind in their wings."

(29) The first of thy ripe fruits.—Heb., of thy fulness. “Firstfruits” were the spontaneous tribute of natural piety among almost all nations. They were called by the Greeks ἀπαρχαί, by the Romans primitive. Abel’s offering (Genesis 4:4) was one of the “firstlings of his flock,” and Cain’s probably one of firstfruits. In the present passage it is assumed that firstfruits are due, and the stress is laid upon offering them promptly, without “delay.” Delay would show a grudging spirit. Of thy liquors.—As wine and oil. (Compare Nehemiah 10:37; Nehemiah 10:39.) The firstborn of thy sons.—See the Note on Exodus 13:2; and on the means of redeeming firstborn sons, see Exodus 13:13, and Num. 17:15, 16.

Verse 29. The first of thy ripe fruits] This offering was a public acknowledgment of the bounty and goodness of God, who had given them their proper seed time, the first and the latter rain, and the appointed weeks of harvest. From the practice of the people of God the heathens borrowed a similar one, founded on the same reason. The following passage from Censorinus, De Die Natali, is beautiful, and worthy of the deepest attention: - Illi enim (majores nostri) qui alimenta, patriam, lucem, se denique ipsos deorum dono habebant, ex omnibus aliquid diis sacrabant, magis adeo, ut se gratos approbarent, quam quod deos arbitrarentur hoc indigere. Itaque cum perceperant fruges, antequam vescerentur, Diis libare instituerunt: et cum agros atque urbes, deorum munera, possiderent, partem quandam templis sacellisque, ubi eos colerent, dicavere. "Our ancestors, who held their food, their country, the light, and all that they possessed, from the bounty of the gods, consecrated to them a part of all their property, rather as a token of their gratitude, than from a conviction that the gods needed any thing. Therefore as soon as the harvest was got in, before they had tasted of the fruits, they appointed libations to be made to the gods. And as they held their fields and cities as gifts from their gods, they consecrated a certain part for temples and shrines, where they might worship them." Pliny is express on the same point, who attests that the Romans never tasted either their new corn or wine, till the priests had offered the FIRST-FRUITS to the gods. Ac ne degustabant quidem, novas fruges aut vina, antequam sacerdotes PRIMITIAS LIBASSENT. Hist. Nat., lib. xviii., c. 2. Horace bears the same testimony, and shows that his countrymen offered, not only their first-fruits, but the choicest of all their fruits, to the Lares or household gods; and he shows also the wickedness of those who sent these as presents to the rich, before the gods had been thus honoured: - ---Dulcia poma, Et quoscumque feret cultus tibi fundus honores, Ante Larem gustet venerabilior Lare dives. Sat., lib. ii., s. v., ver. 12. "What your garden yields, The choicest honours of your cultured fields, To him be sacrificed, and let him taste, Before your gods, the vegetable feast." DUNKIN. And to the same purpose Tibullus, in one of the most beautiful of his elegies: - Et quodcumque mihi pomum novus educat annus, Libatum agricolae ponitur ante deo. Flava Ceres, tibi sit nostro de rure corona Spicea, quae templi pendeat ante fores. Eleg., lib. i., eleg. i. ver. 13. "My grateful fruits, the earliest of the year, Before the rural god shall daily wait. From Ceres' gifts I'll cull each browner ear, And hang a wheaten wreath before her gate." GRAINGER. The same subject he touches again in the fifth elegy of the same book, where he specifies the different offerings made for the produce of the fields, of the flocks, and of the vine, ver.

29–31. A group of fundamental ceremonial injunctions. Jehovah’s customary due from the first annual produce of the threshing-floor and the wine-press to be promptly paid: firstborn males, both of men and animals, to be given to Him; flesh torn of beasts not to be eaten. The laws are stated here tersely and generally: more detailed, and sometimes discrepant, regulations are given in the later codes. 29a. thy fulness and thy trickling thou shalt not delay] A paraphrase is a necessity for English idiom: but it obliterates the characteristic curtness of the original. The two substantives are paraphrased by LXX., no doubt correctly, by ‘the firstfruits of thy threshing-floor and of thy wine-press.’ Both expressions are, however, peculiar, and no doubt archaic. ‘Fulness’ is used similarly in Numbers 18:27 (P) ‘like the fulness [in the parallel, v. 30, ‘increase,’ ‘produce’] from the wine-vat, and the corn from the threshing-floor’ (offered viz. by the Israelites as tithe): it seems to mean properly full yield (RVm. abundance)—here of the newly threshed corn, as in Nu. l.c. of the freshly expressed grape-juice. Naturally it does not signify here the whole yield of the year, but only that part of it which was offered to Jehovah as ‘firstfruits’ (cf. Exodus 23:16; Exodus 23:19). ‘Trickling’ (the masc. of the ordinary Heb. word for ‘tear’), whatever the true explanation of the expression may be1[190], pretty clearly denotes the freshly extracted juice of the grape (tirτsh, ‘must’),—perhaps also (but see footnote) of the olive (yiẓ ?hβr, ‘fresh oil’) as well. [190] Lane, Arab. Lex. p. 913, cites the expression ‘tear of the vine’ for wine; and A. R. S. Kennedy (EB. iv. 5314, s.v. Wine and Strong Drink) refers to the Spanish lagrima, ‘tear,’ the name for wine made from grape-juice which has exuded from the grapes without pressure. Such wine has always been considered superior to that made from juice extracted by treading the grapes; and as this method of obtaining grape-juice is mentioned in the Mishnah, and is still practised in Syria,—the grapes being laid out for some days on a mishtβḥ ?, or ‘spreading-place,’ from which the exuding juice trickled down into the wine-vat (see ibid.),—it is possible that the choice juice so obtained is what is here meant. If this explanation is correct, however, ‘oil’ will not have been included in the term; and the inclusion of this in the firstfruits (Deuteronomy 18:4, &c.) will not have taken place till later.The dedication to the deity of a portion of the new produce of the year is a widely prevalent custom. ‘Primitive peoples often partake of the new corn sacramentally, because they suppose it to be instinct with a divine spirit of life.

The offering of firstfruits appears to have been a custom of primitive antiquity and was connected with the earliest acts of sacrifice. See Genesis 4:3-4.

29. First of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors — Literally, thy fulness and thy tear thou shalt not delay. The first full or ripe produce, and the droppings of oil and wine as pressed from the fruit, are intended.