You shall not sacrifice to Yahweh your God an ox or a sheep in which is a defect or anything evil; for that is an abomination to Yahweh your God.
Not to offer an animal with a temporary blemish
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִזְבַּח לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ שׁוֹר וָשֶׂה אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בוֹ מוּם כֹּל דָּבָר רָע
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהקריב בעל מום עובר. והוא אמרו לא תזבח לה' אלהיך שור ושה אשר יהיה בו מום וגו'. והתבאר בספרי שבבעל מום עובר הכתוב מדבר וזה גם כן ילקה עליו כשעבר והקריבו. (שופטים ושוטרים, הלכות איסורי מזבח פ"א):
He prohibited us from offering animals with temporary blemishes. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "You shall not sacrifice to the Lord, your God, an ox or a sheep that has any blemish, etc." (Deuteronomy 17:1). And it is explained in the Sifrei that the verse is speaking about temporary blemishes. And such a one is also lashed when he transgresses and offers it. (See Parashat Shoftim; 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 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.166-167 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.228 affirmed it
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-official instructions require rejection of animals unfit for sacrifice, broadly paralleling the Deuteronomic concern with sacrificial fitness; the parallel is thematic rather than a parallel to the specific permanent/temporary blemish taxonomy Relationship to the parallel: shared theme CTH 264 (Instructions for 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 offering an animal with a temporary blemish; 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.