690 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts , and Letters . 
house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give 
the tenth unto thee. (Gen. 28. According to this text we see 
that votum, a vow, is an acknowledgment of something which 
a man owes, or which he is in duty bound to do, as to pray, as 
David says in Psalms, I will pay my vow unto the Lord now 
in the presence of all His people. Likewise Jacob speaks 
here intending to do what he says afterwards. The fact that 
he put a condition to it, If God, etc., did not result from 
doubt but from true faith, as if he were to say: I see by this 
wonderful vision that the ladder reaches from heaven to 
earth, etc., and I trust in the promise of the Lord and be¬ 
lieve that He will be my God as He was the God of Abram 
and of Isaac my father and that He will be with me, etc. 
If such will be the case, the Lord will be my God, not as 
though before he was not his God, but he resolves to erect a 
house of worship to God, wherein God should be praised 
and preached and then he resolves to give the tithes of all that 
God would give him to the ministers and the servants of the 
Word; just as his father Abram gave tithes to Melchizedek 
(who praised and blessed God in Abram’s presence and who 
told of His power and might. Likewise Noah was a minister 
of righteousness as Peter bears testimony in his second 
Epistles. (2. Act. 2) 
Likewise Jacob acknowledges here that he was under 
obligations to pay tithes to God for His gifts. He gave to 
his offspring no commandment or law, but an example by 
which he showed that giving was a natural law when one was 
thankful. But when this custom of giving was no longer 
being observed, and in fact had died out in Egypt, God gave 
a commandment through Moses, denominating those to 
whom the tithe should be given and those who should use 
it, namely, the Levites, the descendants of Levi, the third 
son of Jacob, who were continually in the service of the Lord 
and who were to instruct the people in His law. Therefore 
they received no share in the division of the land as did the 
other tribes, but the Lord was their share and they were the 
Lord’s. For Levi means an addition and it became their 
duty to perform the offices of worship which Jacob insti¬ 
tuted. Therefore God purposed to sustain them by the 
tithes which by natural laws belonged to Him. 
