When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine increase,.... Which, according to Maimonides , is to be understood of the feast, in which all tithes are finished, which is the feast of the passover:the third year, [which is] the year of tithing; that is, the third from every seventh, when the land lay fallow.
Every year a tithe was paid to the Levites; and besides that a second tithe, which was carried to Jerusalem and eaten there; and every third year it was eaten at home, in their towns and cities in the country instead of it, with the Levite, poor and stranger, and was called the poor's tithe; and hence the Targum of Jonathan here calls this year the year of the poor's tithe, as was also the sixth year, and was reckoned not complete till the passover in the following year, as the Jewish writers say:and hath given it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow; that is, the poor's tithe of the third year, which these were to eat of with the owner, De 14:28; though the Jews commonly distinguish the Levite from the rest, and suppose that both first and second tithes are meant, the one to be given to the former, and the other to the latter; so the Targum of Jonathan and Jarchi:that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled: for this was a considerable entertainment, a sort of a feast, a full meal, however; hence it is concluded, as Jarchi says, that they did not give less of corn to a poor man than half a kab of wheat, which was above three pints.
In Misn. Maaser Sheni, c. 5. sect. 6. Misn. ib. & Maimon.