At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year,.... This, according to Aben Ezra, was a third tithe, and did not excuse the second tithe; so says:"I gave the third tithe to the repair of the temple,'' (Tobit 1:7)as in one copy, but, according to another, to the stranger, fatherless, and widow, which better agrees with what follows; but the Jewish writers generally understand this as the same with the second tithe, which on the two first years from the sabbatical year was carried to Jerusalem, or money in lieu of it, with which provisions were bought and eaten there, but on the third year were eaten in their own cities with the poor, and in the stead of the other; so says Maimonides , on the third and sixth years from the sabbatical year, after they have separated the first tithe they separate from what remains another tithe, and give it to the poor, and it is called the poor's tithe, and not on those two years is the second tithe, but the poor's tithe, as it is said, "at the end of three years", &c.
and still more expressly elsewhere ; after they have separated the first tithe every year, they separate the second tithe, De 14:22 and on the third and sixth years they separate the poor's tithe instead of the second; and this was done, not at the latter end of the third year, but, as Aben Ezra interprets it, at the beginning; for the word used signifies an extremity, and the beginning of the year is one extremity of it as well as the latter end of it:and lay it up within thy gates; not to be hoarded up, or to be sold at a proper time, but to be disposed and made use of as follows.
Hilchot Mattanot. Anayim, c. 6. sect. 4. In Maaser Sheni, c. 1. sect.