Leviticus 19:23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

When ye shall come into the land, &c.— Though a reason for this law may, with great propriety, be drawn from nature itself, which dictates that the fruit of trees is not proper for use till the period here mentioned, yet it was, most probably, given in opposition to those practices of idolaters, who offered the first year's growth of all their fruit-trees to their gods; conceiving that those trees would be blasted whose first-fruits were not thus offered. Others, however, are of opinion, that the intention of the law was to raise in the Hebrews greater abhorrence of the idolatrous customs of the Canaanites, whose crimes were so abominable, as to render the very land where they dwelt, and its productions, for some time impure; a sense, which they think confirmed by the words, ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised.