On the first day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work.
To rest on the first day of Sukkot
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ כָּל־מְלֶאכֶת עֲבֹדָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשבות ממלאכה ביום ראשון של סוכות. והוא אמרו יתעלה ויתברך שמו ביום הראשון מקרא קדש. (אמור אל הכהנים, זמנים הלכות שביתת יו"ט פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to rest from work on the first day of Sukkot. And that is His, may He be exalted and may His name be blessed, saying, "The first day shall be a sacred occasion" (Leviticus 23:35). (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)
- 11Q19 (Temple Scroll) cols. 27–29 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 27 (Sukkot) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.204-213 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.244-247 described it
The New Testament
- John 7:2, 37 The catalog describes this reception as: attested Jesus attends 'the festival of Booths' (he heorte ton skenopegias); the reference documents Second Temple Sukkot observance and its solemn assemblies rather than the labor-rest commandment specifically
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.