You shall do no kind of work in that same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for you before Yahweh your God.
Not to do any work on Yom Kippur
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכָל־מְלָאכָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה כִּי יוֹם כִּפֻּרִים הוּא לְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מעשות מלאכה ביום ראש השנה. והוא אמרו כל מלאכת עבודה לא תעשו. (שם, שם):
He prohibited doing work on the day of Rosh Hashanah. And that is His saying, "you shall not do any work of labor" (Leviticus 23:25). (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 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
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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) XXV-XXVII affirmed it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 27 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.193-203 affirmed it
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.240-243 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Acts 27:9 carried a parallel Refers to Yom Kippur as 'the Fast' as a calendrical marker; no halakhic engagement with the labor prohibition
The Qur'an and hadith
- Sahih al-Bukhari 2004 (fast of ʿAshuraʾ) carried a parallel
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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Corporal punishment (malkot, up to thirty-nine lashes) imposed for non-violent religious-observance failure is incompatible with the general normative prohibition on inflicting bodily harm as a penal sanction.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; lashing as a court-imposed penalty for failure to observe a religious rest day constitutes degrading punishment under that standard.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality precludes corporal punishment for a non-violent, victimless religious-observance offense; malkot for working on Yom Kippur is grossly disproportionate by post-Enlightenment standards.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that malkot jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of ordained courts (semikhah chain broken by the 4th century CE); the de jure norm remains, but enforcement has been inoperative for over a millennium.