Commandments · Negative commandments

Not to eat leaven from the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nisan onward

#133 Negative commandment Deuteronomy 16:3

The cited verse

The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

לֹא־תֹאכַל עָלָיו חָמֵץ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תֹּאכַל־עָלָיו מַצּוֹת לֶחֶם עֹנִי

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.

  • Recorded as practiced today

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 Kept as an ethical principle
  • Reconstructionist Not binding
  • Karaite As the catalog records it: rejects rabbinic timing

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) XVII–XVIII read it more strictly

Rabbinic aggadah

  • Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa 8 expanded it homiletically

Philo of Alexandria

  • De Specialibus Legibus 2.158 read it allegorically

Josephus

  • Antiquities 3.249 affirmed it

The New Testament

  • 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 read it spiritually Paul reads the removal of leaven as purging 'malice and wickedness,' Christ as the paschal lamb; allegorical transfer of the hametz prohibition
  • Mark 14:12 The catalog describes this reception as: background reference a chronological notice ('the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover') reflecting the fourteenth-of-Nisan timing the rabbinic rule presupposes, rather than a reception of the halakhic prohibition itself

The Church Fathers

  • Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 14 read it allegorically

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 carries makkot mardut (rabbinic disciplinary flogging) for eating leaven from the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nisan onward; post-Enlightenment penal norms reject corporal punishment as a sanction for dietary infractions.

  • Article 7

    This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.

    Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; flogging for consuming a leavened food item in a specific hours-long window constitutes prohibited treatment under that article.

  • abrogated_in_practice

    This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.

    Rabbinic tradition has functionally suspended enforcement: formal corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin, and makkot mardut is not administered by any contemporary Jewish legal institution; the de jure norm remains.

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.