Matthew Henry on Leviticus 19:19-29
Here is, I. A law against mixtures, Lev 19:19. God in the beginning made the cattle after their kind (Gen 1:25), and we must acquiesce in the order of nature God hath established, believing that is best and sufficient, and not covet monsters. Add thou not unto his works, lest he reprove thee; for it is the excellency of the work of God that nothing can, without making it worse, be either put to it or taken from it, Ecc 3:14. As what God has joined we must not separate, so what he has separated we must not join. The sowing of mingled corn and the wearing of linsey-woolsey garments are forbidden, either as superstitious customs of the heathen or to intimate how careful they should be not to mi…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Leviticus 19:23
ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised; three years . . . it shall not be eaten of--"The wisdom of this law is very striking. Every gardener will teach us not to let fruit trees bear in their earliest years, but to pluck off the blossoms: and for this reason, that they will thus thrive the better, and bear more abundantly afterwards. The very expression, 'to regard them as uncircumcised,' suggests the propriety of pinching them off; I do not say cutting them off, because it is generally the hand, and not a knife, that is employed in this operation" [MICHAELIS].
Adam Clarke on Leviticus 19:23
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, Lev 19:24; and in the fifth year and afterward the fruit may be employed for common use, Lev 19:25.
John Gill on Leviticus 19:25
And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof,.... And so in all succeeding years as long as the tree lasted and bore:
that it may yield unto you the increase thereof; may be so abundantly blessed, and produce so large an increase as to answer the three years' want of any fruit from it, and the dedication of the fruit of the fourth year to the Lord:
I am the Lord your God; who has promised this increase, is both able and faithful to make it good.
