Commandments · Positive commandments

To hear the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah

#154 Positive commandment Numbers 29:1

The cited verse

The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

יוֹם תְּרוּעָה יִהְיֶה לָכֶם

In Maimonides’ words

How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.

היא שצונו לשמוע קול שופר ביום ראשון מתשרי והוא אמרו יתעלה יום תרועה יהיה לכם. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת ראש השנה. ואין הנשים חייבות בה. (פינחס, זמנים הלכות שופר וסוכה ולולב פ"א):

And that is that He commanded us to listen to the sound of the shofar on the first day of Tishrei. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "it shall be a day of blowing for you" (Numbers 29:1). And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Rosh Hashanah. (See Parashat Pinchas; Mishneh Torah, Shofar, Sukkah and Lulav 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 As the catalog records it: observed as custom
  • Reconstructionist 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

  • Genesis Rabbah 56:9 expanded it homiletically
  • Pesiqta deRav Kahana 23 expanded it homiletically

Philo of Alexandria

  • De Specialibus Legibus 2.188-192 read it allegorically Philo reads the feast of trumpets as commemorating the Sinai trumpet and as symbolizing cosmic order and war/peace, not pure abstract allegory

The New Testament

  • 1 Corinthians 15:52 reinterpreted it the 'last trumpet' (eschatological salpinx) as resurrection signal
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:16 reinterpreted it trumpet of God at the parousia, drawing on the theophanic shofar/trumpet tradition

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.

Source & licence

The commentary, cross-references, reception, and modern-conflict analysis in this section are drawn from a public compilation of the 613 commandments, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The cited biblical text is rendered from GEBible’s own public-domain reading corpus. CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab). GEBible’s presentation of this material is offered under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.