You shall not offer what is blind, is injured, is maimed, has a wart, is festering, or has a running sore to Yahweh, nor make an offering by fire of them on the altar to Yahweh.
Not to slaughter a blemished animal as a sacrifice
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עַוֶּרֶת אוֹ שָׁבוּר אוֹ־חָרוּץ אוֹ־יַבֶּלֶת אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת לֹא־תַקְרִיבוּ אֵלֶּה לַיהוָה וְאִשֶּׁה לֹא־תִתְּנוּ מֵהֶם עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לַיהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו משחוט בעלי מומין, והוא אמרו לא תקריבו את אלה לה'. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from sacrificing animals with blemishes. And that is His saying, "these shall you not offer to the Lord" (Leviticus 22:22). (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: non operative
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.166-167 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.226-227 affirmed it
The New Testament
- 1 Peter 1:19 read it spiritually Christ as 'a lamb without blemish or spot' (amnou amōmou) reapplies the unblemished-sacrifice requirement christologically
- Hebrews 9:14 read it spiritually Christ offering himself 'without blemish' (amōmon) to God
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 enumerate conditions disqualifying animals and offerings in the sanctuary, paralleling the Levitical concern with the quality of offerings in Lev 22:22 Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence CTH 264 (Instructions to Priests and Temple Officials) J. L. Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts (SBL Writings from the Ancient World 31, 2013)
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 slaughtering a blemished sacrificial 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 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 criminal Sanhedrin jurisdiction lapsed with the destruction of the Second Temple; the offense is also temple-dependent, rendering the sanction doubly inoperative — both institutionally and substantively — in any post-70 CE context.