Matthew 23:23: Tithing Mint, Dill, and Cumin
Short answer: In Matthew 23:23 Jesus rebukes the scribes and Pharisees not for tithing small garden herbs but for treating that carefulness as a substitute for the moral heart of the law. The verse says, as Matthew 23:23 says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone." Jesus names the error precisely: a selective obedience that majors on what is measurable and manageable while neglecting what God calls weighty. He does not tell them to stop tithing; he tells them their tithing was never meant to stand alone. The passage is a warning against religious precision that costs little and loves little, and a summons to hold together the small command and the large one.
What the Pharisees Were Actually Tithing
The herbs named in Matthew 23:23 are not symbolic stand-ins; they are real crops that grew in first-century Judean gardens. Mint, dill, and cumin were household herbs, used in cooking, medicine, and seasoning. Tithing them was a fussy, painstaking business. You cannot easily count individual leaves of mint or measure a tenth of scattered cumin seed without deliberate effort, so the practice reveals something about the people doing it: they were not lazy. They were scrupulous. They wanted to be known as men who kept the law down to the smallest detail.
That scrupulousness rested on a genuine scriptural instinct. The law did command tithes on produce, and the principle reached to the yield of the land. If a man grew herbs, the logic of the law could reasonably extend to them. So Jesus is not mocking the practice as absurd. He is not saying that tithing herbs is a silly overreach. His complaint runs in the other direction: they were careful where care was easy and careless where care was costly. The small obedience was real, and that is exactly what made the omission of justice so damning.
There is a warning here for anyone who has ever felt spiritually secure because of a tidy religious habit. It is possible to read your Bible daily, attend every service, and give with precision, and still be a person who ignores the needy, bends the truth in business, or holds a grudge without any twinge of conscience. The Pharisees were not irreligious; they were religious in a way that left the heart untouched. Their tithing did not create the problem. Their confidence in it did.
Notice also the sheer effort involved. A tenth of a garden herb crop is not a large amount of money, but it is a large amount of attention. The Pharisees gave attention to what could be counted. Justice, mercy, and faith cannot be counted so easily. You cannot tally how many times you forgave someone this month. The measurable command seduced them away from the unmeasurable ones, and the result was a religion of small exactness and large neglect.
The Weightier Matters: Justice, Mercy, and Faith
Jesus calls justice, mercy, and faith the weightier matters of the law. The word weightier does not mean the only matters, and it certainly does not mean the lighter commands were optional. It means these carry more moral freight. Justice has to do with giving people their due, with honest courts and honest scales, with refusing to exploit the weak because you have power. Mercy is compassion in action toward the needy, the guilty, and the overlooked. Faith here is not a vague sincerity but faithfulness, trust, and loyalty toward God that shows itself in how a person lives.
Micah 6:8 makes the same point centuries earlier: "He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" The prophets did not invent a new law. They kept insisting that sacrifice and ritual without justice is an insult to God. The people of Israel could bring the prescribed offerings and still be condemned, because the offerings were meant to express a heart that God already owned. When the heart was absent, the ritual became a cover for the very sins the law forbade.
This is why Jesus can call the Pharisees hypocrites without hesitation. A hypocrite in the biblical sense is not merely someone who fails. It is someone who performs, who wears a mask, who presents an outward righteousness that conceals an inward vacancy. The Pharisees were not failing at the herbs; they were failing at the weightier matters while making a public display of the herbs. The very precision of their tithing became the stage on which their neglect was exposed.
And this should make every reader pause. Most of us have some area where we are careful and visible, and another area where we are loose and unexamined. The verse does not ask us to abandon the careful area. It asks us to stop using it as a hiding place. The weightier matters are not optional extras for the especially devout. They are what the law was always about, and they are what God still looks for in his people.
Luke's Parallel Adds God's Love
Luke 11:42 records a parallel woe in a different setting: "But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, but you bypass justice and God's love. You ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone." Luke names rue instead of dill and cumin, and he says every herb, which broadens the picture. Where Matthew lists three specific spices, Luke generalises. The point is the same in both accounts: careful tithing of garden produce paired with the bypassing of justice and the love of God.
The phrase God's love is worth dwelling on. In Matthew the third weighty matter is faith; in Luke it is the love of God. These are not competing ideas. Faith toward God and love for God belong together, because trust that does not love is cold, and love that does not trust is unstable. Luke's wording makes the relational dimension plain. The Pharisees were not merely failing an ethical checklist; they were neglecting a relationship. You can tithe every herb in your garden and still not love the God who gave you the garden.
Luke's account is also a reminder that Jesus spoke these words more than once, in more than one setting, to more than one audience. This was not a throwaway remark. It was a settled part of his critique of the religious establishment of his day. He kept returning to the same fault line: outward correctness masking inward neglect. That repetition should tell us the issue mattered deeply to him, and it should warn us against treating it as a minor aside.
Both accounts end with the same balanced sentence. You ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone. That sentence is the heart of the passage. It forbids two errors at once. The first error is to abandon the small obedience in the name of the big ones, as if justice makes tithing unnecessary. The second is to keep the small obedience while ignoring the big ones, as if tithing makes justice unnecessary. Jesus will not let us choose between them.
Does Jesus Commend the Tithe Here?
Many readers assume Jesus is dismissing the tithe in Matthew 23:23. The verse will not support that reading. Jesus says plainly that they ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone. That is, they should have practiced justice, mercy, and faith, and they should not have neglected the tithing either. Far from abolishing the tithe, Jesus assumes its continuation in the very sentence where he rebukes those who misuse it. The rebuke is about proportion and priority, not about cancellation.
This matters because the passage is sometimes quoted to argue that tithing belongs to a bygone era and has no place in Christian practice. Whatever one concludes about the precise form of giving under the new covenant, Matthew 23:23 is not the proof text for setting it aside. Jesus is speaking to people under the law, and he affirms the lighter command while insisting on the heavier ones. If anything, the verse raises the stakes rather than lowering them, because it refuses to let giving become a substitute for character.
Faithful Christians differ on how the Old Testament tithe relates to Christian giving. Some see a continuing principle of proportional, firstfruits giving. Others see the tithe as part of the Mosaic economy fulfilled in Christ, with the new covenant calling for generous, voluntary, cheerful giving rather than a fixed percentage. 2 Corinthians 9:7 says, "Let each man give according as he has determined in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." That verse emphasises willingness, not a specific rate.
What both readings share is the conviction that giving matters and that it can never be used to excuse a hard heart. Whether you give a tenth, more, or less, the question this passage presses is whether your giving is joined to justice, mercy, and faith. If it is not, the Pharisees are a warning to you. If it is, the verse does not condemn you; it clarifies you.
Give to Caesar, and to God
Matthew 22:21 records a related exchange: "They said to him, 'Caesar's.' Then he said to them, 'Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.'" The context is a trap about taxes, but the principle reaches further. Jesus distinguishes two spheres without dividing them. Caesar has legitimate claims; God has ultimate claims. The coin bears Caesar's image, so it goes to Caesar. The human being bears God's image, so the human being belongs to God.
Read alongside Matthew 23:23, this shapes how we think about money and religious duty. Caesar's claim is real and limited. God's claim is real and total. The Pharisees were anxious about the small, countable obligations and careless about the large, all-encompassing one. Giving to God is not merely a transaction to be measured; it is the response of a life that belongs to him. A tithe can be paid while the heart remains Caesar's, and that is precisely the hypocrisy Jesus exposes.
The two passages also correct a common confusion. Some people imagine that God's claim and human obligations compete, so that devotion to God excuses neglect of duty, or duty to Caesar excuses neglect of God. Jesus refuses both. You can render to Caesar what is his and to God what is his, and the two are not rivals. In the same way, you can tithe your herbs and practice justice, and neither cancels the other. The life God wants is integrated, not divided into compartments.
This integration is the practical heart of the passage. A person whose giving is genuine will also be a person who deals honestly, shows mercy, and trusts God. A person whose giving is a performance will eventually be exposed in the other areas, because the mask cannot cover everything. The question is not whether our giving is impressive, but whether it flows from a life that actually belongs to God.
The Priesthood, Abraham, and the Tenth
Hebrews 7:4-9 reaches back to Abraham and Melchizedek to make a theological point about the priesthood of Christ. The text says, as Hebrews 7:4-9 says, "Now consider how great this man was, to whom even Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth out of the best plunder." The argument is that Levi, the priestly line, was in a sense present in Abraham when he gave the tenth, so that the priesthood of Melchizedek stands above the Levitical order. This is a passage about the superiority of Christ's priesthood, not a manual on Christian giving.
Yet the passage does show that giving a tenth has deep roots that precede the law of Moses. Abraham gave a tenth to Melchizedek long before Sinai. That does not settle every question about how Christians should give, but it does show that proportional giving is not a novel or merely legal idea. It is woven into the story of God's people from early on, and it is treated in Hebrews as something significant rather than trivial.
The writer of Hebrews uses the tenth as evidence, not as a command. That distinction matters. He is not telling his readers to tithe; he is showing them that the priesthood they now have in Christ is greater than the one that came through Levi. The tenth functions as a marker of honour and precedence. When Abraham gave a tenth to Melchizedek, he was acknowledging a greater priest. In the same way, our giving to God acknowledges that he is greater than everything we hold.
So the whole arc of Scripture holds together. Abraham gave a tenth. The law regulated tithes. The prophets insisted that tithes without justice are worthless. Jesus affirmed tithing while demanding the weightier matters. The new covenant calls for cheerful, voluntary generosity. The constant thread is that God's people give because God has first given to them, and that giving is never a substitute for a transformed life.
Applying the Verse Without Becoming a Pharisee
The first application is to examine where you are careful and where you are careless. Most of us have a visible obedience that makes us feel safe, and an unexamined area where we have quietly made peace with sin. The Pharisees tithed herbs and neglected justice. Perhaps you serve faithfully at church and speak harshly at home. Perhaps you give generously and gossip freely. The verse invites honest self-examination without self-righteousness, because the same Jesus who spoke the woe also offers mercy to those who repent.
The second application is to refuse the false choice between the small and the large. Jesus says to do both. Do not abandon the discipline of giving because you care about justice; do not abandon justice because you give. A healthy Christian life holds together the measurable and the unmeasurable, the routine and the costly. If you have stopped giving, the passage does not excuse that. If you give but ignore mercy, the passage does not excuse that either. Both are commanded, and both can be done in the strength God supplies.
The third application is to let mercy flow toward others. Mercy is one of the weightier matters, and a person who has received mercy is in a position to give it. The Pharisees had no mercy because they were not conscious of needing any. The more clearly we see our own need, the more freely we forgive and help. This is not a vague sentiment; it shows up in concrete acts, in debts released, in time given, in money shared, in reputations protected, in the poor remembered. That is what Jesus meant when he told the Pharisees they had left the weightier matters undone.
The fourth application is to keep faith at the centre. Faith here is faithfulness and trust in God, the settled confidence that he is worth more than anything we give up. When that confidence is alive, tithing herbs and giving to the poor are not competing burdens; they are both expressions of the same love. When it is dead, the smallest command becomes a substitute for the greatest ones. Matthew 23:23 is not a rebuke of careful obedience. It is a call to wholehearted obedience, the kind that reaches all the way down into how we treat people and how we trust God.
Biblical fidelity check
The passage establishes several things clearly. Jesus affirms that the tithing of herbs was something they ought to have done, and he affirms that justice, mercy, and faith are weightier and must not be neglected. He calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites because they used careful, visible obedience to cover the neglect of substantial commands. The verse also shows that Jesus taught a both-and, not an either-or, obedience: these you ought to have done, and not to leave the other undone. It does not establish a detailed regulation for Christian giving under the new covenant, nor does it give a percentage that all believers must follow.
A common misreading is that Jesus is abolishing the tithe or mocking careful giving. That is wrong because he explicitly says the tithing ought to have been done. Another misreading is that the passage makes tithing optional or unimportant; that ignores the same sentence. A third misreading treats the verse as a general endorsement of any percentage system, which goes beyond what the text says. The right reading keeps both halves: careful obedience matters, and it can never stand in for the weightier matters of the law.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 23:23
Several related studies help round out the picture. The theme of unity and careful teaching appears in What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, which shows how the church is called to a wholehearted, undivided obedience. God's faithfulness, the ground of our own faithful giving, is examined in What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. The wider concerns of the letter are surveyed in 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. Warnings against self-confident religion, which is exactly the Pharisaic danger, appear in 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom. Each of these helps keep the weightier matters in view.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jesus abolishing the tithe in Matthew 23:23?
No. The verse says the tithing of herbs ought to have been done, while the weightier matters should not have been left undone. Jesus is correcting their priorities, not cancelling the practice. He rebukes them for using careful tithing as a cover for neglecting justice, mercy, and faith. Whatever view a Christian takes on how the tithe relates to new-covenant giving, this verse cannot be used to say Jesus told his hearers to stop tithing, because he explicitly says the opposite.
What are the weightier matters of the law?
Jesus names justice, mercy, and faith in Matthew 23:23, with Luke 11:42 saying justice and God's love. Justice is giving people their due and refusing to exploit the weak. Mercy is compassion shown in action to the needy and the guilty. Faith includes trust in God and faithfulness in living before him. These are called weightier because they carry more moral freight, not because the other commands were optional or unimportant. They are the heart of what the law was always meant to produce.
Does this passage apply to Christians today?
Yes, because the underlying principle is not limited to first-century Judaism. Religious activity can still become a substitute for real righteousness, and outward precision can still mask inward neglect. Christians are not under the Mosaic law in the same way the Pharisees were, and believers differ on how tithing applies today. But every Christian is called to justice, mercy, and faithfulness, and no amount of giving, serving, or ritual can replace those weightier matters in the sight of God.
