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The Produce of Fruit Trees

23 “‘When you enter the land and plant any fruit tree,[a] you must consider its fruit to be forbidden.[b] Three years it will be forbidden to you;[c] it must not be eaten. 24 In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, praise offerings[d] to the Lord. 25 Then in the fifth year you may eat its fruit to add its produce to your harvest.[e] I am the Lord your God.

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Footnotes

  1. Leviticus 19:23 tn Heb “tree of food”; KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV “trees for food.”
  2. Leviticus 19:23 tn Heb “you shall circumcise its fruit [as] its foreskin,” taking the fruit to be that which is to be removed and, therefore, forbidden. Since the fruit is uncircumcised it is forbidden (see J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 306, and esp. B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 131-32).
  3. Leviticus 19:23 tn Heb “it shall be to you uncircumcised.”
  4. Leviticus 19:24 tn See B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 132, where the translation reads “set aside for jubilation”; a special celebration before the Lord.
  5. Leviticus 19:25 tn Heb “to add to you its produce.” The rendering here assumes that the point of this clause is simply that finally being allowed to eat the fruit in the fifth year adds the fruit of the tree to their harvest. Some take the verb to be from אָסַף (ʾasaf, “to gather”) rather than יָסַף (yasaf, “to add; to increase”), rendering the verse, “to gather to you the produce” (E. S. Gerstenberger, Leviticus [OTL], 260, and see the versions referenced in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 306). Others take it to mean that by following the regulations given previously they will honor the Lord so that the Lord will cause the trees to increase the amount of fruit they would normally produce (Hartley, 303, 306; cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

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 their uncircumcision: three years shall they be as uncircumcised unto you; it shall not be eaten. 24 But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy, for giving praise unto Jehovah. 25 And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am Jehovah your God.

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