Commandments · Negative commandments

Not to eat the flesh of the Passover offering boiled or raw

#123 Negative commandment Exodus 12:9

The cited verse

The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

אַל־תֹּאכְל֤וּ מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ נָ֔א וּבָשֵׁ֥ל מְבֻשָּׁ֖ל בַּמָּ֑יִם

In Maimonides’ words

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

הזהירנו מאכול קרבן פסח מבושל או נא אלא צלי אש בלבד. והוא אמרו יתעלה אל תאכלו ממנו נא ובשל מבושל במים. וכבר בארתי בשרש ט' מזה המאמר שמי שעבר על לאו זה לוקה. (בא אל פרעה, קרבן פסח פ"ח):

He prohibited us from eating the Pesach-offering boiled or uncooked, but rather only roasted with fire. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You must not eat it uncooked or boiled in water" (Exodus 12:9). And I have already explained, in Principle 9 (Sefer HaMitzvot, Shorashim 9:5) of this essay, that one who transgressed this negative commandment is lashed. (See Parashat Bo; Mishneh Torah, Paschal Offering 8.)

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 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.

Rabbinic aggadah

  • Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa 6 expanded it homiletically

Philo of Alexandria

  • De Specialibus Legibus 2.145-148 rationalized it

Josephus

  • Ant. 2.311-313 affirmed it

The Church Fathers

  • Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 40 read it allegorically interprets the spit-roasted whole lamb as a type of the crucifixion

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 malkot for eating the Passover offering by a method other than fire-roasting; post-Enlightenment penal norms reject corporal punishment as a state sanction for dietary-ritual infractions.

  • Article 7

    This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.

    Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; judicially administered flogging for a food-preparation method constitutes treatment prohibited under that article.

  • abrogated_in_practice

    This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.

    Both the malkot sanction and the underlying temple-dependent offense are doubly inoperative: corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the Sanhedrin, and the Passover sacrifice cannot be offered absent a functioning Temple.

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.