You shall take on the first day the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God seven days.
To take the four species (lulav, etrog, myrtle, and willow) on Sukkot
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים וַעֲנַף עֵץ עָבֹת וְעַרְבֵי נָחַל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו ליטול לולב ולשמוח בו לפני ה' שבעת ימים. והוא אמרו יתברך ולקחתם לכם ביום הראשון וגו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ג מסוכה, ושם התבאר שאין חובת מצוה זו שבעת ימים אלא במקדש, אולם בשאר הארצות יום ראשון לבד הם חייבין בו מן התורה. ומצוה זו אין הנשים חייבות בה. (אמור אל הכהנים, זמנים הלכות שופר וסוכה ולולב פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us to hold the lulav and to rejoice in front of the Lord seven days. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "And you shall take for yourselves on the first day, etc." (Leviticus 23:40). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the third chapter of Tractate Sukkah. And it was explained there that the obligation of this commandment seven days is only in the Temple. However in other places, they are only obligated by the Torah on the first day. And women are not obligated in this commandment. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Shofar, Sukkah and Lulav 6.)
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, with modification
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
- Leviticus Rabbah 30:12 expanded it homiletically
- Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 27 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.204 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.245 affirmed it
- Ant. 13.372 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative attestation
The New Testament
- John 12:13 carried a parallel crowds wave palm branches (ta baia ton phoinikon) at Jesus' entry — festal branch-carrying motif, not a Sukkot halakhic citation
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.