You shall not tempt Yahweh your God, as you tempted him in Massah.
Not to test or try God beyond what is proper
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תְנַסּוּ אֶת־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר נִסִּיתֶם בַּמַּסָּה
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
Two readings, side by side
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this is one of them.
In the traditional Jewish reading How the Jewish legal (halakhic) tradition reads and defends this commandment, in its own developed voice — the classical reasons given for the commandments (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).
The tradition reads this as the prohibition on putting God to the test, as Israel did at Massah, with one exception the sources single out.
Maimonides reads the prohibition as barring a person from testing whether God’s word holds — in particular from demanding further signs of a prophet whose standing has already been established. To keep pressing for signs once the matter is settled is the testing the verse forbids.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 10:5; Sefer HaMitzvot (12th c.)
The Talmud marks one case where testing is invited rather than forbidden: the prophet Malachi’s call to bring the tithes and “test Me in this,” which the sages read as the single matter in which a person may put God to the test.
Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 9a (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 9a — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
Linked rather than reproduced — Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 9a: A public-domain or CC0 English translation exists at this reference but does not carry the passage cited.
The Sefer HaChinuch gives the reason that a settled trust in God leaves no room for demanding fresh signs on call, and that the person of faith serves without setting conditions on the outcome.
Sefer HaChinuch (13th c.)
Rabbinic citations here link to the source text at Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. Where a public-domain or CC0 English translation — one anyone may reuse — of the exact passage cited has been verified and is short enough to set out in full, the passage is also reproduced here in the source’s own words; where it is not, the citation says which of those conditions it missed. Which passages are reproduced is a matter of licensing, length and verification — never of how much a source matters.
Modern critical scholarship How modern academic biblical scholarship reads this text — the source-critical and form-critical school. Its hedges are shown as it states them; nothing here is presented as settled fact.
Modern source-critical scholarship assigns this text to the Deuteronomic source (D).
Scholarly confidence in this reading: scholarly consensus.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against Demand for cultic/miraculous proof of divine presence as a precondition for covenant loyalty; per the Deuteronomic frame, an inversion of proper suzerain-vassal trust. Not aimed at a rival cult per se but at faithless covenant disposition modeled on the Massah tradition..
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayassa 7 expanded it homiletically
- Exodus Rabbah 26:2 expanded it homiletically treats the Massah/Meribah wilderness-complaint tradition
Josephus
- Ant. 3.1.3-7 (3.9-38) expanded it homiletically retelling of the wilderness murmuring/Massah-Meribah water narratives; thematic focus on testing is implicit rather than developed
The New Testament
- Matthew 4:7 affirmed it Jesus quotes Deut 6:16 against the temptation to force divine rescue
- Luke 4:12 affirmed it parallel temptation citation
- Hebrews 3:7-4:3 expanded it homiletically midrash on Ps 95 and Massah as warning against apostasy
- 1 Corinthians 10:9 expanded it homiletically Paul invokes the wilderness 'testing' as paraenetic warning
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties demand for unconditional loyalty to the suzerain, with prohibition against the vassal questioning or presuming upon the great king's authority Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary loyalty-oath stipulations of the Esarhaddon Succession Treaty (SAA 2 no. 6); general formulary parallel rather than a verbal parallel Parpola and Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- atrahasis epic humans who disturb the gods through their noise and presumption are visited with plague, drought, and flood — the Mesopotamian narrative of divine-human relational breakdown through human provocation is a thematic parallel to the Massah tradition of testing divine patience, though framed in cosmogonic rather than covenantal terms Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet I-II (noise/overpopulation complaints of the gods leading to divine affliction of humanity) Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.
Deuteronomy 6:16 commands, "You shall not put YHWH your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah" (לֹא תְנַסּוּ אֶת־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר נִסִּיתֶם בַּמַּסָּה). The verb נסה means 'to test, to try, to prove,' and the verse explicitly references the incident at Massah (Exodus 17:1–7), where the Israelites, dying of thirst in the wilderness, challenged Moses and effectively said: 'Is YHWH among us or not?' The place was named Massah (מַסָּה, 'testing') and Meribah (מְרִיבָה, 'quarrel') to memorialize the event. In its Deuteronomic context, this prohibition against 'testing God' means demanding that YHWH prove himself through miraculous intervention as a precondition for obedience. The logic is covenantal: a vassal does not make demands of his suzerain; he trusts and obeys.
The concept of 'testing God' in the Hebrew Bible operates on an interesting double standard. God regularly tests humans — Abraham at the Binding of Isaac (Gen 22:1), Israel in the wilderness (Deut 8:2, 'YHWH your God tested you these forty years'), and even Job. But humans testing God is presented as an act of faithlessness, a reversal of proper hierarchical order. This asymmetry reflects the suzerain-vassal framework underlying the Deuteronomic covenant: the superior party tests loyalty; the inferior party demonstrates it. Psalm 95:8–11 revisits the Massah incident as a paradigmatic failure of trust, and it is cited in the New Testament's Letter to the Hebrews (3:7–11) as a warning against apostasy. The wilderness generation's 'testing' is consistently treated in biblical tradition as the archetypal sin of covenant unfaithfulness.
Ancient Near Eastern parallels to this concept are limited but instructive. In Mesopotamian religion, humans did not typically 'test' gods — the relationship was one of supplication and appeasement rather than negotiated covenant. The Babylonian 'Theodicy' and 'Ludlul Bel Nemeqi' wrestle with the problem of unjust divine behavior, but the sufferers in these texts do not challenge the gods to prove themselves; they lament and petition. The idea that a community might collectively demand proof of divine presence before obeying — which is what happens at Massah — seems to presuppose the kind of bilateral covenant relationship that is distinctive to Israelite theology. In the Hittite world, vassals who tested the patience of the great king or questioned his power were punished swiftly, and the treaty texts warn against exactly this kind of presumption.
The New Testament citation of this verse in the temptation narrative (Matthew 4:7, Luke 4:12) — where Jesus quotes it against Satan's suggestion that he throw himself from the temple pinnacle to force God's rescue — became the most culturally influential reading of Deuteronomy 6:16. In rabbinic tradition, the prohibition was developed into a broader principle against demanding miraculous signs or relying on divine intervention when natural means are available. The Talmud (b. Yoma 11b, b. Ta'anit 9a) grapples with apparent exceptions: Malachi 3:10 seems to invite Israel to 'test' God by tithing faithfully and seeing if blessing follows. The rabbis harmonized by distinguishing between legitimate acts of faith (tithing, with the expectation of reward) and illegitimate demands for proof (refusing to obey until God performs). Maimonides does not count this as a separate commandment in his enumeration, suggesting the prohibition is subsumed under the general obligation of trust and loyalty — a reminder that the traditional 613 count varies significantly between authorities.