And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
Ver. 23. Three years shall it be as uncircumcised.] And so to be cast away, as the foreskin of the flesh was. The fourth year it was to be separate, to be offered to the Lord in sign of thanksgiving. And then in the fifth year to be eaten. This was to show that the very fruits of the earth are, after a sort, polluted by man's sin, till purged by a new kind of blessing. 1Ti 4:5 Hereby also God would separate his own people from other nations: and show that they might with a better conscience feed upon the fruits of the earth than others could. There are that set this mystical sense upon the text. Christ, for three years' space, planted the gospel in Judea; but the foreskins were cast away for that time - that is, the gospel was not preached yet to the uncircumcised Gentiles. In the fourth year these fruits were consecrated to God - that is, Christ in the fourth year of his ministry died for the sins of the world, rose again, ascended, and sent down the Holy Ghost, whereby the apostles and others were sanctified, being, as it were, the first fruits of the Promised Land. In the fifth year, the fruits of the gospel, planted by Christ, began to be common, preached to the Gentiles, believed in the world. 1Ti 3:16