“ ‘If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offerings, if he offers it from the herd, whether male or female, he shall offer it without defect before Yahweh.
To perform the prescribed procedures for the peace offering
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִם־זֶבַח שְׁלָמִים קָרְבָּנוֹ אִם מִן־הַבָּקָר הוּא מַקְרִיב אִם־זָכָר אִם־נְקֵבָה תָּמִים יַקְרִיבֶנּוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיהיה מעשה קרבן חטאת על התואר הנזכר איזה חטאת שיהיה, והוא אמרו וזאת תורת החטאת. ומבואר גם כן בויקרא איך יקרב ומה ממנה ישרף ומה יאכל. (צו, מעשה קרבנות פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us with the process of the sin-offering sacrifice, according to the description that is mentioned - whatever sin-offering it may be. And that is His saying, "This is the law of the sin-offering" (Leviticus 6:18). And in Leviticus, it is also explained how it is offered, what is burnt from it and what is to be eaten. (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Sacrificial Procedure 6.)
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 As the catalog records it: binding in abeyance
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QT (Temple Scroll) cols. 20-23 The catalog describes this reception as: expanded
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 9:1-9 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.212-225 The catalog describes this reception as: ethicized allegorized
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.228-229 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Hebrews 13:15-16 read it spiritually Sacrifice reconceived as praise and shared good works
- 1 Corinthians 10:18 The catalog describes this reception as: analogical appropriation Paul invokes the Israelite sacrificial-meal principle analogically — those who eat the sacrifices share in the altar — rather than reinterpreting the shelamim statute itself
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 4-5 read it allegorically
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 cognate šlmm sacrifice appears in Ras Shamra ritual lists as a major offering category alongside the šrp (burnt offering), indicating the shelamim has deep roots in shared West Semitic sacrificial practice predating Priestly codification Relationship to the parallel: common ancestor KTU 1.39; 1.41 (slmm in Ugaritic offering lists) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBLWAW 10, 2002)
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.