Deuteronomy 26:14

14. I have not eaten thereof in my mourning While mourning for the dead the person would be in a condition of legal uncleanness.

Neither have I taken away aught thereof for any unclean use Better, in uncleanness. That is, when I was in a condition of legal uncleanness.

Nor given aught thereof for the dead This, says Keil, most probably refers to the custom of sending provisions into a house of mourning, to prepare meals for the mourners. See 2 Samuel 3:35; Jeremiah 16:7. There is a custom in the East at the present day of sending large quantities of food cooked in a particular manner to the friends of the deceased in his name. See The Land and the Book, first edition, vol. i, p. 150. “No doubt Deuteronomy 26:12-14, offers a difficulty; but it cannot fairly be said to be greater than the town tax, school tax, and internal revenue tax would offer to a Greenlander who started with the outrageous blunder that each law belonged to an independent, not to a co-ordinate code.” Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1882, p. 321.