Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh. On the eighth day shall be a holy convocation to you. You shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh. It is a solemn assembly; you shall do no regular work.
To rest on Shemini Atzeret
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ יִהְיֶה לָכֶם... עֲצֶרֶת הִוא 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 שמיני מחג הסוכות. והוא אמרו יתעלה וביום השמיני מקרא קדש. ודע שזאת השביתה המוטלת עלינו בכל יום ויום מאלו הששה ימים דינם דין אחד ולא יחוד להם ליום זולת השביתה ההיא, וכן אוכל נפש מותר לנו לעשותו בכל יום טוב. וכבר התבארו משפטי השביתה הזאת במסכת יום טוב. אולם השביתה המוטלת בשבת ויום הכפורים היא גם כן השביתה ההיא בעצמה ותוספות רבות כי אינו מותר בשני ימים אלו אוכל נפש, ויש גם כן דברים מותרים ביום טוב ואסורין בשבת ואע"פ שאינן אוכל נפש כמו שהתבאר במסכת יו"ט. (אמור אל הכהנים, זמנים הלכות שביתת יו"ט פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to rest from work on the eighth [day] of the holiday of Sukkot. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and on the eighth day, a sacred occasion" (Leviticus 23:26). And you should know that regarding this rest that is incumbent upon us on each and every one of these six days, its laws are uniform and there is nothing unique in the rest of any one of them. And likewise is it permissible for us to do [preparation of] food of sustenance (okhel nefesh) on each holiday. And the regulations of this resting have already been explained in Tractate [Beitzah]. Indeed the rest that is incumbent on Shabbat and Yom Kippur is also this very resting, but with many additions. For these two days, [preparation of] food of sustenance is not permitted. And there are also things that are permissible on holidays that are forbidden on Shabbat even though they are not [preparation of] food of sustenance, as is 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 Not binding
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- b. Sukkah 55b expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.211-213 rationalized it Philo treats the eighth-day concluding assembly within his rationalizing account of the festival calendar
Josephus
- Ant. 3.247 affirmed it
The New Testament
- John 7:37 carried a parallel 'the last and great day of the feast' has been variously identified with the seventh day of Sukkot or the eighth-day concluding assembly; the referent is debated among commentators
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.