Commandments · Positive commandments

To follow the prescribed procedure when a sacrifice becomes unfit (pigul or notar)

#117 Positive commandment Leviticus 7:17

The cited verse

The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

וְהַנּוֹתָר מִבְּשַׂר הַזָּבַח בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי בָּאֵשׁ יִשָּׂרֵף

In Maimonides’ words

How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.

היא שצוה לשרוף נותר, והוא אמרו יתברך והנותר מבשר הזבח באש ישרף. ובבאור אמרו בכבש הפסח לא תותירו ממנו, אמרו במכילתא בא ליתן עשה ולא תעשה, ובמקומות רבים מפסחים ומכות וזולתם אמרו בבאור כי לאו דנותר נתק לעשה. ולכן אין לוקים עליו, והעשה הוא שזכרנו והנותר ממנו באש תשרופו, ודין הפגול והנותר שוין כמו שאבאר במצות לא תעשה כי כבר הוציא הפגול בלשון נותר. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת פסחים וסוף תמורה. (צו, פסולי המוקדשין פי"ט):

That is that He commanded to burn leftovers (notar). And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "What is left over of the meat of the sacrifice shall be burned" (Leviticus 7:17). And in explanation of His [also] saying about the Pesach lamb, "You shall not leave over from it" (Exodus 12:10), they said in the Mekhilta (Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 12:10), "It comes to give a positive commandment and a negative commandment." And in many places in Pesachim and Makkot and other places besides them, it says in explanation, that it is a negative commandment that is rectified by a positive commandment; and therefore we do not receive lashes for it. And the positive commandment is that which we mentioned, "What is left over from it, you shall burn" (Exodus 12:10). And the law of leftovers and improper (pigul) [sacrifices] is the same, as I will explain in the Negative Commandments (Sefer HaMitzvot, Negative Commandments 132). For the improper has already been referred to by the expression, "leftovers." And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Pesachim and at the end of Temurah. (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Things Forbidden on the Altar.)

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 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 1.220-223 (treats sacrificial portions and consumption-time limits generally rather than the third-day burning rule specifically) rationalized it

Josephus

  • Ant. 3.227-229 carried a parallel

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.

The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #120 — Structural duplicate of #120 sharing collision_key shm:Positive 91. Independent reading of both entries from commandments_101-120.json confirms a true duplicate. Both #117 and #120 cite Leviticus 7:17, both list SHM Positive 91 and Chinuch 143, both reproduce the IDENTICAL Hebrew text (וְהַנּוֹתָר מִבְּשַׂר הַזָּבַח בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי בָּאֵשׁ יִשָּׂרֵף), the ide See task #95..

Source & licence

The commentary, cross-references, reception, and modern-conflict analysis in this section are drawn from a public compilation of the 613 commandments, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The cited biblical text is rendered from GEBible’s own public-domain reading corpus. CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab). GEBible’s presentation of this material is offered under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.