The Law of Tithing

Seven verses, and the whole of the corpus’s tithing law is in them. What makes them worth a page of their own is how much of the definition is load-bearing: the law has a one-time opening stage and a recurring stage, they are stated in different units, and the section attaches to the whole a condition that the land itself hangs on.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. Dates, places, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated.

Account

Two stages, two units

The opening stage is stated as a requirement of a whole category of property, with the destination and four named uses: “Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion,” (D&C 119:1); “For the building of mine house, and for the laying of the foundation of Zion and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the Presidency of my Church.” (D&C 119:2). “surplus property” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus.

That stage is then labelled as a beginning rather than the law itself: “And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.” (D&C 119:3). The recurring stage follows, in a different unit, on a different period, and with a stated duration: “And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.” (D&C 119:4). “one tenth of all their interest” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus.

The two stages are distinguished by the text itself — surplus property once, one-tenth of interest annually thereafter — and the wiki reports the distinction as the verses state it. What “interest” denotes is not defined in the verse, and is carried to Open uncertainties below rather than glossed here.

The condition attached to the land

The law’s last three verses are not about payment. They attach a condition first to persons and then to the land: “all those who gather unto the land of Zion shall be tithed of their surplus properties, and shall observe this law, or they shall not be found worthy to abide among you” (D&C 119:5); and then the sharpest sentence in the section — “if my people observe not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and my judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, behold, verily I say unto you, it shall not be a land of Zion unto you” (D&C 119:6). The law is then extended beyond the central place by a single closing clause: “And this shall be an ensample unto all the stakes of Zion. Even so. Amen.” (D&C 119:7).

Where the word stands elsewhere

“tithing” stands at five distinct frozen verses in the corpus, four of them in the Doctrine and Covenants; “tithed” at three, all three in the Doctrine and Covenants. The phrase that binds three of those verses together is the same three-word possessive.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () Intra-corpus: - D&C 119:3: “And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.” - D&C 97:11: “Yea, let it be built speedily, by the tithing of my people.”

“the tithing of my people” stands at exactly three distinct frozen verses in the corpus — these two and D&C 64:23 — and nowhere else in the corpus. Divergences reported: the earlier verse names a purpose the tithing is for, a house to be built speedily, and the later verse names the tithing as something with a beginning, which the earlier does not; the earlier is disclosed as the phrase’s third carrier. The earlier verse’s neighbour supplies the requirement it belongs to: “this is the tithing and the sacrifice which I, the Lord, require at their hands, that there may be a house built unto me for the salvation of Zion—” (D&C 97:12). The third carrier states a consequence the other two do not: “verily it is a day of sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming” (D&C 64:23) — “shall not be burned at his coming” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () This law may be picking up an older tithing commandment rather than stating a new one. The evidence: both direct a tithe into a named institutional destination for the upkeep of a house — “I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion” (D&C 119:1), “For the building of mine house” (D&C 119:2); against “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house” (Malachi 3:10). Against reading them as one commandment: the units differ (surplus property, then one-tenth of interest, against “all the tithes”), the destinations are differently named (a bishop’s hands against a storehouse), and the older verse attaches a promise the newer has no counterpart for — the windows of heaven opened — while the newer attaches a condition the older lacks, that without the law the land “shall not be a land of Zion unto you” (D&C 119:6). No four-word run stands verbatim in both. “tithes into the storehouse” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus, Malachi 3:10 and 3 Nephi 24:10, which reproduces it — and neither is in this section. That the two commandments are of a kind is visible; that this one is a restatement of that one is an interpretive reading, offered to weigh, not asserted.

Significance

Two things in these seven verses are worth reporting exactly because they are easy to blur. First, the law has two stages in two different units, and the text marks the seam itself — “the beginning of the tithing of my people” (D&C 119:3) for the surplus-property stage, “And after that” (D&C 119:4) for the annual one-tenth. Second, the section’s stake is not revenue but the standing of a place: the failure clause does not say the people will be poorer, it says the land “shall not be a land of Zion unto you” (D&C 119:6), which puts this short law directly against The Gathering to Zion’s survey material and its named land.

Key references

D&C 119:1–2 — surplus property; the four uses named
D&C 119:3–4 — the beginning; then one-tenth of interest annually, a standing law
D&C 119:5–7 — the condition on persons, on the land, and the extension to the stakes
D&C 64:23, 97:11–12 — the phrase’s other two carriers, and what each attaches to it

Consecration and Stewardship · The Gathering to Zion · The Redemption of Zion · Offices of the Church · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants section 119 throughout, with D&C 64:23 and D&C 97:11–12 quoted alongside it (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-reference quoted from Malachi 3; 3 Nephi 24 is cited, not quoted, inside a disclosure.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Two connection records are registered on this page — one [textual] and one [interpretive] — both submitted asserted_by: wiki. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by script at the time of writing; the basis is stated at the head of this draft.