But you shall not offer whatever has a defect, for it shall not be acceptable for you.
Not to dedicate a blemished animal for the altar
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ מוּם לֹא תַקְרִיבוּ כִּי־לֹא לְרָצוֹן יִהְיֶה לָכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהקדיש בעלי מומין לגבי מזבח, והוא אמרו יתברך כל אשר בו מום לא תקריבו ואמרו הרי הוא עובר משום בל תקדיש. (אמור אל הכהנים, הלכות איסורי מזבח פ"א):
He prohibited us from consecrating animals with blemishes on the altar. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "You shall not offer anything that has a blemish" (Leviticus 22:20). And they said (Sifra, Emor, Section 7:4), "Behold, he transgresses on account of, do not consecrate." (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Things Forbidden on the Altar 1.)
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 prohibition
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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 As the catalog records it: in principle binding (no Temple)
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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 52:3-5 read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.166-167 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.228 affirmed it
The New Testament
- 1 Peter 1:19 read it allegorically Christ as a lamb 'without blemish and without spot' (amōmou) appropriates the tamim/mum offering ideal christologically
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 1 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 instructions demand the integrity and purity of offerings presented to the gods and forbid temple personnel from diverting the best portions for themselves; this concern for the quality of what is brought before the deity loosely parallels the Israelite insistence on unblemished offerings, though the Hittite text addresses personnel honesty rather than an explicit blemish-inspection rule Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence CTH 264 (Instructions for Temple Officials) McMahon, 'Instructions to Temple Officials,' in The Context of Scripture 1.83; cf. ANET pp. 207-211
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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes flogging (malkot, thirty-nine lashes) as the court-imposed sanction for dedicating a blemished animal; modern human-rights norms categorically prohibit judicially administered corporal punishment as degrading treatment.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the malkot sanction prescribed for this offense is incompatible with that prohibition as interpreted by the Human Rights Committee.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the Sanhedrin's criminal jurisdiction lapsed with the destruction of the Second Temple; additionally, the offense is temple-dependent, rendering the sanction doubly inoperative — both institutionally and substantively — in any post-70 CE context.