“It shall be a statute to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and shall do no kind of work, whether native-born or a stranger who lives as a foreigner among you;
To afflict oneself (fast) on Yom Kippur
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעִנִּיתֶם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להתענות ביום עשירי מתשרי. והוא אמרו יתעלה תענו את נפשותיכם ובא הפירוש בספרא תענו ענוי שהוא אבוד נפש ואיזהו זה אכילה ושתיה, וכן באה הקבלה שהוא אסור ברחיצה בסיכה ובנעילת הסנדל ובתשמיש המטה, והשביתה היא מיוחדת מאלה הפעולות כלם באמרו שבת שבתון היא לכם ועניתם את נפשותיכם כאילו אמר שחובה היא השביתה המיוחדת במלאכות והשביתה המיוחדת במזון הגוף וקיומו, ולכן אמר שבתון. ולשון ספרא מנין שיום הכפורים אסור ברחיצה וסיכה תלמוד לומר שבת שבתון כלומר השביתה תהיה מכל אלה הדברים עד שיגיע הענוי. (אחרי מות, זמנים הלכות שביתת עשור פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to fast on the tenth day of Tishrei. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "afflict your souls" (Leviticus 16:29). And the explanation appears in the Sifra (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Chapter 7:3), "'Afflict' - affliction that destroys a soul. And what is that? [Abstention from] eating and drinking." And the tradition (Yoma 73a) likewise came [to teach] that it is forbidden for bathing, anointing, wearing shoes and sexual relations. And the resting is designated for all of these actions by His saying, "It is a Shabbat of Shabbaton, and you shall afflict your souls" (Leviticus 16:31): It is as if He said that the obligation is the specific resting from work and the specific resting from nourishment for the body and its preservation. And He hence said, "Shabbaton." And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Chapter 8:3) is, "From where [do we know] that [...] bathing [and] anointment [...] are forbidden on Yom Kippur? [Hence] we learn to say, 'It is a Shabbat of Shabbaton.'" That is to say that the resting be from all of these things until he arrives at affliction. (See Parashat Acharei Mot; 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
- 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
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Binding, with modification
- 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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 25:10-12 read it more strictly
- 1QpHab 11:4-8 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative attestation Incidental attestation that the Day of Atonement was observed (the Wicked Priest pursuing the Teacher on that day), rather than direct reception of the affliction precept.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer 46 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.186-187 rationalized it
- De Vita Mosis 2.23-24 The catalog describes this reception as: passing reference Passing reference within the broader treatment of festivals rather than a developed allegorization of the fast.
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.240-243 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Acts 27:9 carried a parallel Refers to Yom Kippur as 'the Fast' (ἡ νηστεία), attesting the established equation of self-affliction with fasting in the 1st c. CE.
- Hebrews 9:7-12 read it spiritually Reworks the Day of Atonement entry into the Holy of Holies christologically; engages the priestly rite rather than the lay affliction.
The Qur'an and hadith
- Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Sawm (fast of ʿAshuraʾ) carried a parallel The ʿAshuraʾ fast traditions describe an early Muslim fast historically associated with a Jewish fast day, a comparative parallel rather than direct dependence.
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.