Whoever offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to Yahweh to accomplish a vow, or for a free will offering of the herd or of the flock, it shall be perfect to be accepted. It shall have no defect.
All offerings must be without blemish
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
תָּמִים יִהְיֶה לְרָצוֹן כָּל מוּם לֹא יִהְיֶה בּוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיהיה כל מה שנקריבהו שלם במינו תמים מן המומין שבאו בכתוב ושאמרו בקבלה שהן מומין, והוא אמרו תמים יהיה לרצון. ולשון ספרי תמים יהיה לרצון מצות עשה. וכבר הביאו ראיה על היות יינות נסכים ושמניהם והסלת בתכלית הטוב והנקיות מן ההפסד מאמרו תמימים יהיו לכם ונסכיהם. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ח ממנחות. (אמור, איסורי מזבח פרק א'), (פינחס, איסורי מזבח פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us that all of that which we offer Him be consummate for its type - flawless from blemishes that appear in Scripture and those that they pronounced as such from tradition. And this is His saying, "it must, to be acceptable, be flawless" (Leviticus 22:21). And the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra Emor, Section 7:9) is, "'It must, to be acceptable, be flawless' - is a positive commandment." And they already brought a proof that the wines of the libations and their oils and the fine flour must be the best and clean from any corruption - from His saying, "flawless for you, with their libations" (Numbers 28:31). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 8 of Menachot. (See Parashat Pinchas; Mishneh Torah, Things Forbidden on the Altar 6.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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 Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QT (Temple Scroll) 52 The catalog describes this reception as: harmonizing stringent
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 27:1-2 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.166-167 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.226-227 paraphrased it
The New Testament
- 1 Peter 1:19 read it spiritually Christ as a lamb 'without blemish and without spot' (amōmos), transferring the tamim standard to a sacrificial christology
- Hebrews 9:14 read it spiritually Christ 'offered himself without blemish' (amōmon) to God
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum read it allegorically
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.
- hittite instructions Hittite temple officials required to inspect sacrificial animals for physical defects before acceptance; officials responsible for rejecting defective animals Relationship to the parallel: shared theme CTH 264 (Instructions for Temple Officials) Goetze, 'Instructions for Temple Officials' in ANET pp. 207-211; cf. McMahon, The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities (1991) and Taggar-Cohen, Hittite Priesthood (2006)
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic ritual texts enumerate categories of acceptable burnt and peace offerings, implying a standard of sacrificial fitness for animals presented to the gods Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.39; 1.41 (ritual offering lists) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBLWAW 10, 2002)
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.