Little room for doubt on any disputed point of partition do these exhaustive, and, occasionally, it must be owned, exhausting, masters leave us, yet, when all is said, they are careful to add, ‘Whatever is doubtful concerning the gifts of the poor belongeth to the poor.’ The actual money value of this system of alms, the actual weight of ancient ephah or omer, in modern lbs. and ozs. would convey little meaning. Values fluctuate and measures vary, but ‘a tithe of thy increase,’ ‘a corner of thy field,’ gives a tolerably safe index to the scale on which _tzedakah_ was to be practised. Three times a day the poor might glean, and to the question which some lover of system, old style or new, might propound, ‘Why three times? Why not once, and get it over?’ an answer is vouchsafed. ‘_Because there may be poor who are suckling children, and thus stand in need of food in the early morning; there may be young children who cannot be got ready early in the morning, nor come to the field till it be mid-day; there may be aged folk who cannot come till the time of evening prayer._’ Still, though plenty of sentiment in this code, there is no trace of sentimentality; rather a tendency for each back to bear its own burden, whether it be in the matter of give or take. Rights are respected all round, and significant in this sense is the rule that if a vineyard be sold by Gentile to Jew it must give up its ‘small bunches’ of grapes to the poor; while if the transaction be the other way, the Gentile purchaser is altogether exempt, and if Jew and Gentile be partners, that part of the crop belonging to the Jew alone is taxed. And equally clear is it that the poor, though cared for and protected, are not to be petted. At this very three-times-a-day gleaning, if one should keep a corner of his ‘corner’ to himself, hiding his harvesting and defrauding his neighbour, justice is prompt: ‘_Let him be forced to depart_,’ it is written, ‘_and what he may have received let it be taken out of his hands._’ Neither is any preference permitted to poverty of the plausible or of the picturesque sort: ‘_He who refuseth to one and giveth to another, that man is a defrauder of the poor_,’ it is gravely said.