Leviticus 19:23

And when ye shall come into the land,.... The land of Canaan, whither they were now going: and shall have planted all manner of trees for food; such that brought forth fruit that was eatable, as figs, grapes, olives, c.

And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.

As uncircumcised, i.e. as unclean, not to be eaten, but cast away, and counted abominable, as the foreskins are. Three years. This precept was serviceable, 1. To the trees themselves, which grew the better and faster, being early stript of those fruits, which otherwise would have derived to themselves and drawn away much more of the strength from the root and tree. 2. To men, both because the fruit then was waterish, undigested, and unwholesome, and because hereby men were taught to bridle their appetites; a lesson of great use and absolute necessity in a godly life. 3. To God, who required and deserved the first-fruits, which must be also of the best, and so they could not be in this time.

Leviticus 19:23 And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.Ver. 23. Three years shall it be as uncircumcised.] And so to be cast away, as the foreskin of the flesh was. The fourth year it was to be separate, to be offered to the Lord in sign of thanksgiving. And then in the fifth year to be eaten. This was to show that the very fruits of the earth are, after a sort, polluted by man’ s sin, till purged by a new kind of blessing. Hereby also God would separate his own people from other nations: and show that they might with a better conscience feed upon the fruits of the earth than others could. There are that set this mystical sense upon the text. Christ, for three years’ space, planted the gospel in Judea; but the foreskins were cast away for that time - that is, the gospel was not preached yet to the uncircumcised Gentiles. In the fourth year these fruits were consecrated to God - that is, Christ in the fourth year of his ministry died for the sins of the world, rose again, ascended, and sent down the Holy Ghost, whereby the apostles and others were sanctified, being, as it were, the first fruits of the Promised Land. In the fifth year, the fruits of the gospel, planted by Christ, began to be common, preached to the Gentiles, believed in the world.

(23) And when ye shall come.—Rather, And when ye be come, as the Authorised Version renders the same phrase in Leviticus 14:34. This is one of the four instances in Leviticus of a law being given prospectively having no immediate bearing on the condition of the people of Israel (viz., Leviticus 14:34; Leviticus 19:23; Leviticus 23:10; Leviticus 25:2), and though all the four enactments are introduced by the same phrase, they are translated in three different ways in the Authorised Version:—“When ye be come into the land,” in Leviticus 14:34; Leviticus 23:10; “When ye shall come into the land,” in Leviticus 19:23; and “When ye come into the land,” in Leviticus 25:2; thus giving the impression as if the phrases in the original were different in the different passages. In legislative formulae it is of importance to exhibit uniformly the same phraseology in a translation. Shall have planted all manner of trees for food.—From this declaration the administrators of the law during the second Temple inferred that the trees planted by the inhabitants of Canaan before the Israelites took possession of it, were exempt from this law, and that it only applies to fruit-trees intended for food, such as citron-trees, olive-trees, fig-trees, vines, &c. Trees which bore fruit unfit for human food, which grew up by themselves, or which were planted for hedges or timber, did not come under this law. Then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised.—Literally, then shall ye circumcise its uncircumcision, its fruit, that is, cut off or pinch off its uncircumcision, which the text itself explains as “its fruit.” The metaphorical use of circumcision is thus explained by the text itself: it denotes the fruit as disqualified or unfit. In Leviticus 26:41 the same metaphor is used for the heart which is stubborn or not ripe to listen to the Divine admonitions. And in other passages of Scripture it is used with reference to lips (Exodus 6:12; Exodus 6:30) and ears (Jeremiah 6:10) which do not perform their proper functions. Three years shall it be.—The cutting off of the fruit is to be repeated every year during three successive years. As the produce of the earliest year when let to grow upon the trees is both stunted and tasteless, and, moreover, as by plucking off the fruit or pinching off the blossom the trees will thrive better and bear more abundantly afterwards, the Lawgiver enacts here as law that which was in vogue amongst careful husbandmen from time immemorial, thus debarring greedy owners from acting in a way which would ultimately be to their own material injury. It shall not be eaten.—According to the authorities in the time of Christ, this interdict extended to any and every advantage to be derived from the first three years’ produce. The fruits must not be sold, but must either be burnt, or buried in the ground; and if any one eat as much as an olive he received forty stripes save one.

Verse 23. Three years shall it be as uncircumcised] I see no great reason to seek for mystical meanings in this prohibition. The fruit of a young tree cannot be good; for not having arrived at a state of maturity, the juices cannot be sufficiently elaborated to produce fruit excellent in its kind. The Israelites are commanded not to eat of the fruit of a tree till the fifth year after its planting: in the three first years the fruit is unwholesome; in the fourth year the fruit is holy, it belongs to God, and should be consecrated to him, Leviticus 19:24; and in the fifth year and afterward the fruit may be employed for common use, Leviticus 19:25.

23. The fruit tree in its first three years is to be regarded as a male infant during his first eight days (Dillm.), i.e. as unconsecrated. Probably the object was to allow the tree time to become accustomed to the soil, and so to postpone the enjoyment of the fruit till both quantity and quality had had time to develop. This agrees with the direction in Leviticus 19:24 that in the fourth year it should be dedicated to the Lord. Of the manner in which this dedication was to be carried out we are ignorant, but the hallowing itself was on the same principle as that of the firstborn of mankind and of cattle (Exodus 13:2). For a festive celebration, apparently of the kind contemplated in this v., cp. Judges 9:27 (with R.V. mg.).

Fruit ... uncircumcised - i. e. unfit for presentation to Yahweh. In regard to its spiritual lesson, this law may be compared with the dedication of the first-born of beasts to Yahweh Exodus 13:12; Exodus 34:19.

23. Count the fruit… as uncircumcised — The fruit of the first three years was to be thrown away as unclean or uneatable.