According to the decisions of the law which they shall teach you, and according to the judgment which they shall tell you, you shall do. You shall not turn away from the sentence which they announce to you, to the right hand, nor to the left.
To obey the Sanhedrin and the sages in matters of Torah law
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עַל־פִּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ וְעַל־הַמִּשְׁפָּט אֲשֶׁר־יֹאמְרוּ לְךָ תַּעֲשֶׂה לֹא תָסוּר מִן־הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר־יַגִּידוּ לְךָ יָמִין וּשְׂמֹאל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשמוע לבית דין הגדול ולעשות כל מה שיצוו מאיסור והיתר ואין הבדל בזה בין הדבר שיסברוהו או דבר שיוציאוהו מן ההיקשים שהתורה נדרשת בהן או הדבר שיסכימו עליו שהוא איסור תורה או לפי ענין מן הענינים שיהיה דעתם שהוא ישר ושבו חזוק לתורה הכל אנחנו חייבין לשמוע ולעשות ולעמוד על פיהם לא נעבור ממנו. והוא אמרו יתברך על פי התורה אשר יורוך. ולשון ספרי כל המצוה אשר יאמרו לך תעשה זו מצות עשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בסוף סנהדרין. (שופטים ושוטרים, הלכות ממרים פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to listen to the Great Court and to do everything that they command us, to forbid and to permit. And there is no difference in this whether the matter is one that they have understood from reason, that they have derived from analogies by which the Torah is expounded, that they agreed that it was prohibited by the Torah or according to some content that that they think is correct and by which the Torah is reinforced - [about] all of it are we obligated to listen, to do and to practice, according to their words; we are not to diverge from this. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "In accordance with the instructions given you" (Deuteronomy 17:11). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 154:3) is, "'And [the judgment] that they tell you, shall you do' - that is a positive commandment." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained at the end of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Rebels 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 flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Rejected
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) LVI:1-11 read it more strictly
- CD X:4-10 reinterpreted it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §154 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.188-192 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.218 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:2-3 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed with critique the 'seat of Moses' logion affirms the authority to teach while criticizing the teachers' conduct
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:59 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi judicial integrity / finality of verdicts Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §5 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws penalty for resisting/overturning a judgment of the king's court Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §173 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites (1997)
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.