“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘This is the law of the sin offering: in the place where the burnt offering is killed, the sin offering shall be killed before Yahweh. It is most holy.
To perform the prescribed procedures for the sin offering
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
זֹאת תּוֹרַת הַחַטָּאת בִּמְקוֹם אֲשֶׁר תִּשָּׁחֵט הָעֹלָה תִּשָּׁחֵט הַחַטָּאת לִפְנֵי יְהוָה קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים הִוא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיקריב כל מי ששגג בחטא ויהיה יחיד קרבן הטאת. והוא אמרו יתעלה ואם נפש אחת תחטא בשגגה וזו היא חטאת קבועה כלומר שהיא לעולם חטאת בהמה. וכבר בארנו שהחטאים שיתחייב עליהן חטאת בשוגג הם שחייבין על זדונו כרת. ובתנאי שיהיו מצות לא תעשה ויהיה בהם מעשה, כמו שהתבאר בריש כריתות (דף ב'). ומשפטי מצוה זו נתבארו במסכת מנחות וכריתות ובמסכת שבת ובשבועות ובזבחים. (ויקרא אל משה, הלכות שגגות פ"א):
That is that He commanded us that anyone who erred in a sin and is an individual offer a sin-offering sacrifice. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And if a person sins in error." And that is a fixed sin-offering - meaning that is always an animal sin-offering. And we have already explained that sins for which we are liable for a sin-offering when inadvertent, we are liable for excision when volitional - and that is on condition that they are negative commandments and that they involve an action, as it is explained at the beginning of Keritot (Keritot 2). And the regulations of this commandment are explained in Tractate Menachot and Keritot, and in Tractate Shabbat, Shevuot and Zevachim. (See Parashat Vayikra; Mishneh Torah, Offerings for Unintentional Transgressions 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 ritual instruction
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) XVI-XXV read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 7:3 expanded it homiletically
- Sifra Vayiqra, Hovah 4:1-8 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.226-246 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.230-232 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Hebrews 9:11-14 reinterpreted it Christ as definitive purification offering entering the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood
- Hebrews 13:11-12 reinterpreted it draws on the burning of the hattat carcass outside the camp (Lev 4:12; cf. 16:27) as a type of Jesus suffering 'outside the gate'
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 2-3 read it spiritually
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.
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic communal purification ritual (npy) invokes divine forgiveness for assembled community sins with sacrificial offerings, paralleling the hattat's communal purification function Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence KTU 1.40 (communal expiation ritual) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBLWAW 10, 2002)
- hittite ritual texts Hittite lustration rites apply blood to sacred objects and spaces to cleanse pollution, paralleling the hattat's blood-application rites that purge sanctuary pollution — though without the Israelite system's calibration to social hierarchy of the sinner Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence CTH 391; CTH 446 (Hittite purification rituals involving blood-smearing) Wright, The Disposal of Impurity (SBLDS 101, 1987)
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.