You must not offer any of these as the bread of your God from the hand of a foreigner, because their corruption is in them. There is a defect in them. They shall not be accepted for you.’ ”
Not to accept a blemished animal from a gentile for sacrifice
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּמִיַּד בֶּן־נֵכָר לֹא תַקְרִיבוּ אֶת־לֶחֶם אֱלֹהֵיכֶם מִכָּל־אֵלֶּה כִּי מָשְׁחָתָם בָּהֶם מוּם בָּם לֹא יֵרָצוּ לָכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהקריב קרבנות נכרים כשהם בעלי מומין, ולא נאמר אחר שהוא נכרים נקריב בעבורו בעל מום. והוא אמרו יתעלה ומיד בן נכר לא תקריבו, ומי שעבר והקריב לוקה. (אמור אל הכהנים, שם פ"א):
He prohibited us from offering the sacrifices of gentiles when they are animals with blemishes; and we should not say, "Since he is a gentile, we will offer an animal with a blemish for his sake." And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And from the hand of a gentile, you may not offer" (Leviticus 22:25). And one who transgressed and offered [it] is lashed. (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
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.166-167 rationalized it
Josephus
- Against Apion 2.77 affirmed it
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.