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.
Not to inflict a blemish on a consecrated animal
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
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.
הזהירנו מתת מום בקדשים, וזה יקרא מטיל מום בקדשים, וכל מי שיטיל מום בקדשים לוקה, ובתנאי שיהיה זה בזמן שבית המקדש קיים דחזי לקרבן, ובאה האזהרה בזה כל מום לא יהיה בו. ולשון ספרא לא יהיה בו מום לא תתן בו מום. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from putting a blemish into consecrated animals. And that is called, placing a blemish into consecrated animals. And any one who places a blemish into consecrated animals is lashed - and this is on condition that it is at the time that the Temple exists - that it be fit as a sacrifice. And the prohibition that appears about this is, "no blemish shall be on it" (Leviticus 22:21). And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Emor, Section 7:9) is, "'No blemish shall be on it' - do not put a blemish in it." (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 Binding in principle
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
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.
-
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 deliberately blemishing a consecrated animal; modern human-rights norms categorically prohibit judicially administered corporal punishment as degrading treatment.
-
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.
-
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.