It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, and on the next day. If anything remains until the third day, it shall be burned with fire. If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination. It will not be accepted; but everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned the holy thing of Yahweh, and that soul shall be cut off from his people.
Not to eat sacrificial flesh left beyond its prescribed time (notar)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהַנּוֹתָר עַד־יוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי בָּאֵשׁ יִשָּׂרֵף׃ וְאִם הֵאָכֹל יֵאָכֵל בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי פִּגּוּל הוּא לֹא יֵרָצֶה׃
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מאכול נותר והוא מה שנשאר מבשר קדשים אחר הזמן המונה לאכילתם. ולא באה בתורה אזהרה בבאור. והוא אמרו יתעלה בפרשת קדושים בזבח קרבן שלמים והנותר עד יום השלישי באש ישרף, ואם האכל יאכל ביום השלישי וגו' ונכרתה הנפש. הנה נתבאר שהוא בכרת אם היה מזיד ואם היה שוגג חייב קרבן חטאת קבועה, וזה העונש כתוב ואולם האזהרה היא מאמרו במלואים לא יאכל כי קדש הוא זה הכנוי שהוא הוא גם כן כולל כל מה שנפסל שאין מותר לאכול כמו הנותר. ובמעילה (דף י"ז:) אמרו על לשון המשנה הפגול והנותר אין מצטרפין זה עם זה מפני שהם שני שמות אמרו לא שנו אלא לטומאת ידים דרבנן אבל לענין אכילה מצטרפין דתניא רבי אליעזר אומר לא יאכל כי קדש הוא כל שבקדש פסול ליתן לא תעשה על אכילתו, והפגול והנותר הם מפסולי הקדש ולפיכך כל אחד משניהם מוזהר מאכול אותו באמרו לא יאכל כי קדש הוא. וכבר התבאר עונש הנותר שהוא בכרת. (קדושים, שם י"ח):
That He prohibited us from eating notar - and that is what is left over from the meat of consecrated items after the time assigned for their eating. But the prohibition about this is not explicit in the Torah. [However the punishment is explicit.] And that is His, may He be exalted, saying in Parashat Kedoshim about the sacrifice of the peace-offerings, "what is left over by the third day must be consumed with fire. If it should be eaten on the third day, etc. that person shall be excised" (Leviticus 19:6-8). Behold it is explicit that it is [punished] with excision if it was volitional. And if it was inadvertent, he is liable for a fixed sin-offering. So the punishment is written. However the prohibition is His statement about the inauguration-offerings - "it shall not be eaten because it is holy" (Exodus 29:33). And this reference, "it," is also including everything that was disqualified, such as notar - that it is not permissible to eat [it]. And one who transgressed and ate [it] is lashed. And in Meilah (Meilah 17b), they said about the language of the Mishnah, "Piggul (a sacrifice disqualified by its intention) and notar do not join together, on account of their being two separate categories" - they said, "That was only learned with regards to the ritual impurity of the hands, which is rabbinic. But with regards to the matter of eating, they do join together. As it is taught, 'Rabbi Eliezer says, "'It shall not be eaten because it is holy' - [this teaches that regarding] any consecrated food that has been disqualified, the verse comes to apply a negative commandment about its eating."'" And piggul and notar are among the disqualifications of consecrated foods. So therefore each one of them was forbidden from being eaten by His saying, "It shall not be eaten because it is holy." And it has already been explained that the punishment for notar is excision. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Sacrifices Rendered Unfit 18.)
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
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
- Karet — being 'cut off'
Ritual remedy
- A sin-offering (ḥatat)
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 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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) cols. 20-23 read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.222 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.227 paraphrased it
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 ritual texts associate the šlmm peace offering with a communal-meal context; this furnishes a thematic West Semitic parallel for sacrificial commensality, but no explicit time-limit on sacred consumption is attested in these texts Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.41; 1.87 (ritual offering texts specifying sacrificial meal contexts) 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.
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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 eating notar flesh; modern human-rights norms categorically prohibit judicially administered corporal punishment as degrading treatment.
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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.
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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.