In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty first day of the month at evening.
To eat unleavened bread (matzah) on the first night of Passover
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בָּרִאשֹׁן בְּאַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר יוֹם לַחֹדֶשׁ בָּעֶרֶב תֹּאכְלוּ מַצֹּת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לאכול מצה בליל חמשה עשר מניסן, יהיה שם כבש הפסח או לא יהיה. והוא אמרו יתברך בערב תאכלו מצות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת פסחים. (בא אל פרעה, זמנים הלכות חמץ ומצה פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us to eat matzah on the night of the fifteenth of Nissan - whether there is a Pesach lamb or not. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "at evening, you shall eat matzot" (Exodus 12:18). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Pesachim (See Parashat Bo; Mishneh Torah, Leavened and Unleavened Bread 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.
- 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
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
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Optional
- Reconstructionist Optional
- Karaite 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)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) XVII–XVIII affirmed it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisha 8 expanded it homiletically
- Exodus Rabbah 19:7 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.158-161 rationalized it
- De Vita Mosis 2.224 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 2.316 described it
- Antiquities 3.249 described it
The New Testament
- 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 read it allegorically Paul reads unleavened bread as 'sincerity and truth,' contrasting the 'old leaven' of malice
- Luke 22:7-20 reinterpreted it Synoptic Last Supper situated at the eating of matzah/Passover meal
The Church Fathers
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 14 read it spiritually
- Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha reinterpreted it
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.