In the first day there shall be to you a holy convocation, and in the seventh day a holy convocation; no kind of work shall be done in them, except that which every man must eat, only that may be done by you.
To rest on the first day of Passover
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּבַיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ ... כָּל־מְלָאכָה לֹא־יֵעָשֶׂה בָהֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשבות ביום ראשון של פסח. והוא אמרו יתעלה ביום הראשון מקרא קדש ובא בפירוש קדשהו והוא שלא תעשה בו כל מלאכה אלא מה שמיוחד באכילה לבד כמו שבאר הכתוב. וכבר קדם (מצוה צ':) לשון אמרם (שבת כ"ה) האי שבתון עשה כלומר כל יום טוב שאמר השם בו שבתון הוא כאילו אמר שבות או תשבות ואלו כלם הם צווים בשביתה שבתות ה' נקראו ימי המועדים כלם רוצה לומר ימים טובים. וכבר בא בפירוש במקומות רבים אמרו יום טוב עשה ולא תעשה כלומר כי בטול המלאכה בכל יום טוב עשה הוא ועשית המלאכה המוגבלת לא תעשה ולכן מי שעשה בו מלאכה מוגבלת עבר על מצות עשה ולא תעשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו כלומר שביתה במסכת יום טוב. (אמור אל הכהנים, זמנים הלכות שביתת יום טוב פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to rest on the first day of Pesach. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And on the first day, a sacred occasion" (Exodus 12:16). And the explanation (Rosh Hashanah 32a) came [to say] - "Sanctify it" - that is, that you should not do any work on it except that which is specific for eating alone, as is explained in Scripture. And their language already appeared (Sefer Hamitzvot, Positive Commandments 90), "This term, Shabbaton, is a positive commandment" (Shabbat 25b). This means to say, that every holiday about which God said, Shabbaton, is as if He said, "Rest," or "You shall rest" - and these are all commands to rest. God's days of rest are called sacred occasions, meaning to say, holidays. And their saying - "a holiday is a positive commandment and a negative commandment" - has already come in explanation in many places. This means that the negation of work on a holiday is a positive commandment; and that [not] doing certain work is a negative commandment. And hence one one who does certain work on it has transgressed a positive commandment and a negative commandment. And the regulations of this commandment - meaning resting - have already been explained in Tractate [Beitzah]. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Rest on a Holiday 1.)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- 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)
- Jubilees 49:7-23 read it more strictly Jubilees 49 elaborates Passover observance (sacrifice timing and festival conduct) with heightened stringency; text attested among Qumran finds
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisha 9 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.145-149 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.248-249 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 22:1 carried a parallel Festival of Unleavened Bread / Passover assumed as observed
- John 19:31 affirmed it the day treated as a special Sabbath/festival day requiring bodies be removed before sundown, presupposing festival cessation of activity
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.