Commentaria in Numeros
The second cause of this ordinance was that the other tribes might follow the priests with great reverence and love, and the priests in turn might be the more earnest for their salvation; hence it was brought about that in spiritual and sacred things all should depend on the priests, while these in the bodily supports of life should depend on the other tribes, as if to say: If you, O Israelites, wish to honour me as your God, give my priests what is required for food and clothing, give what is owed to me by you; if you, O priests, wish in return to receive from the Israelites fat victims, first-fruits and oblations, labour diligently in the sacred rites, teach my people my laws with care, win them to yourselves by your religion, doctrine, diligence and example, and do not check their liberality and munificence by impiety, sloth, idleness and wantonness: their soul has been committed by me to you, your body to them.
The third cause was that God wished his ministers to give the people a picture of the heavenly life, that it might not, after its custom, gape too much after earth and earthly goods, but have these only for use, and have heavenly things in its vow and desire. For, as St. Augustine says, hom. 93 On the Words of the Apostle: “Temporal goods never cease to inflame us when they are to come, to corrupt us when they come, to torment us when they pass; desired, they burn; possessed, they grow cheap; lost, they vanish”; and St. Bernard: “Love not,” he says, “things which defile when loved, burden when possessed, and torture when lost.”
To this David alludes, Psalm xv, 5, saying: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is thou that wilt restore my inheritance to me,” as if to say: God is to me every good and all things; besides God I ask nothing, says St. Augustine: this inheritance, which thou thyself art, O Lord, no man shall take from me. For thou dost confirm it to me here by grace, and in heaven wilt confirm it in very deed by glory.
Our clerics imitate this, who are therefore called clerici, or the clergy, that is, the lot and portion of the Lord, and in turn those whose lot and inheritance is the Lord. So St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, when Nola was taken by the barbarians and he was made captive, prayed: “Lord, let me not be tortured for gold and silver; for where all my possessions are, thou knowest,” that is, thou art my lot and my portion in the land of the living. So St. Augustine, bk. i On the City of God, chap. x.
21. AND TO THE SONS OF LEVI I HAVE GIVEN ALL THE TITHES OF ISRAEL.—Hitherto God gave to the priests, for their ministry, the victims, first-fruits and other votive and free-will oblations; here he gives tithes to the Levites. Hence it is plain that tithes were not given to both Levites and priests, as Ribera holds, bk. iii On the Temple, chap. ii, but to the Levites alone: for the Levites in turn gave tithes out of these to the priests, as is said here, and as Josephus teaches, and Nehemias, chap. x, verses 37 and 38; for what he says there: “And the priest the son of Aaron shall be with the Levites in the tithes of the Levites,” he presently explains, adding: “And the Levites shall offer the tithe of their tithe in the house of our God, to the storehouse, that it may be distributed to the priests (1).”
Rabbi Eliezer relates that Levi was the tenth of the sons of Jacob, counting from Benjamin, and was therefore offered to God by St. Michael, that these Levites might serve on earth as the angels in heaven; and that St. Michael then said to God that it is right a king should feed his servants, and so God gave the tithes to the Levites. Whether it happened so in history God knows; otherwise this is a pious and ingenious contemplation.
22. NOR COMMIT A DEADLY SIN—which would be to them a cause of death, both of the present and of the eternal.
Verse 23. TO THE SONS OF LEVI ALONE, SERVING ME IN THE TABERNACLE, AND BEARING THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE.—“Sins,” that is, the punishments of the sins of the people, namely if the people should intrude upon the ministry of the tabernacle, if that should happen through the negligence of the Levites. For to the Levites was committed the custody of the tabernacle:
AN ORDINANCE—this law and statute shall be everlasting.
26. COMMAND THE LEVITES: WHEN YOU SHALL RECEIVE OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL THE TITHES WHICH I HAVE GIVEN YOU, OFFER THE FIRST-FRUITS (that is, the tithes) OF THEM TO THE LORD (whence it follows),
THAT IS, THE TENTH PART OF THE TENTH.—Here God commands the Levites that they offer the tenth of their tithes to God, that is, to God’s priests; and this to the end that in these tithes the Levites might be equal to the other tribes, which out of their labour offered tithes to the Lord, as I shall presently say more plainly.
27. THAT IT MAY BE REPUTED TO YOU AS AN OBLATION OF FIRST-FRUITS, AS WELL OF THE BARNFLOORS AS OF THE WINEPRESSES—as if to say: You, O Levites, out of the tithes of Israel which I assigned in verse 21, shall give the tenth part of them to the high priest and the priests, and shall set it apart for them first, before you take anything from it for yourselves. And so these shall be truly your tithes and first-fruits, both of grain and of grapes and wine, which you shall offer to me by giving them to the priests; and I shall receive them from you as if you were lay Israelites, and were paying me the first-fruits and tithes of your fields and vineyards.
Some, as Lyranus and Abulensis, think that this tithe of the tithe, that is, the hundredth part of all the fruits of the whole of Israel, was given by the Levites to the high priest. For this seems to be said in verse 28: “Give them to Aaron the priest.” If so, the high priest was surely very rich, receiving yearly the hundredth part of the fruits of all Judea. And hence St. Thomas, II-II, Q. lxxxvii, art. 4, ad 3, and others teach that it is fitting that all clerics, even bishops, give tithes of their goods to the Roman Pontiff. The Pontiff, however, does not exact them, but in their place demands annates in the greater benefices, that is, the fruits of the first year, when he confers a benefice upon anyone.
But others judge better that this tithe of the tithe was given by the Levites not to the high priest alone, but to all the priests. Otherwise the high priest would have been very rich, and the priests, being very many, very poor. So teaches Josephus, an eyewitness, bk. iv Antiquities, chap. iv, and St. Jerome on Ezech. xlv, and Philo, in his book On the Honours of Priests, at the end, and from them Ribera, bk. iii On the Temple, chap. ii. It is likely, however, that from this tithe of the tithe a good part, in proportion to the dignity of his person, went to the high priest.
28. OF WHICH YOU RECEIVE THE FIRST-FRUITS—that is, the tithes: so the Chaldee; for these fell to the Levites; but the first-fruits properly so called fell to the priests, as is plain from verse 11 and those following.
AND GIVE THEM TO AARON THE PRIEST—that he may distribute them among the priests; for he is the head and prince of the priests.
29. ALL THE THINGS THAT YOU SHALL OFFER OUT OF THE TITHES, AND SHALL SEPARATE FOR THE GIFTS OF THE LORD, SHALL BE THE BEST AND CHOICEST—Let those Christians note this who in tithes, first-fruits and other offerings give the vilest things to God, and are punished with barrenness of crops and with poverty, as the Jews were punished, as Malachias testifies, chap. 1, verse 14, and chap. 2, verse 2; and Aggeus teaches that in a like case the same were punished, chap. 1, verse 6 and following. On the contrary, God is wont to repay with fertility those who pay tithes such as they should. Hear St. Augustine, homily 48 among the 50: