John Calvin Commentary Exodus 22:29

"Thou shalt not delay to offer of thy harvest, and of the outflow of thy presses. The first-born of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." — Exodus 22:29 (ASV)

You shall not delay. We may gather from this passage that the first-fruits were offered so that the Israelites should devote themselves and their possessions to God. For Moses enjoins these two things together: that they should not delay to consecrate to God from the abundance of their fresh fruits, and their first-born.

But we know that, in offering the first-born, the memory of their deliverance was revived by the acknowledgment of the preservation of their race and of their cattle. Furthermore, added to the grace of their redemption was the continual supply of food for them day by day.

I do not agree with the opinion of those who restrict the word fullness³³⁹ to wine, because it flows more abundantly from the press, and interpret the word tear³⁴⁰ to mean oil, because it runs less freely; nor do I approve of the idea of those who apply fullness only to dry fruits. It seems more proper to me to take fullness as the generic term, while tear is taken to denote liquids, as if Moses commanded them not only to offer grapes and olive-berries, but the very drops which were expressed from the fruit.

The other passages confirm this command: that they should not defraud God of the first-fruits, and so bury the memory of their redemption and profane themselves in their very eating and drinking, but rather by this portion of the fruits sanctify the food of the whole year.

Nor is it without reason that Moses so often emphasizes a point that is not at all obscure, since all these warnings were despised and neglected by the Jews as soon as they had returned from the Babylonian captivity, as Malachi complains in Malachi 3.

³³⁹ Vide margin, — margin, — A. V.

³⁴⁰ Vide margin, — margin, — A. V.