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.
Not to deviate from the ruling of the Sanhedrin
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
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.
הזהירנו מחלוק על בעל הקבלה ומצאת ממצותיו ממעשה התורה. והוא אמרו לא תסור מן הדבר אשר יגידו לך ימין ושמאל. ולשון ספרי לא תסור זו מצות לא תעשה, והעובר על לאו זה הוא זקן ממרא וחייב חנק ובתנאים המקובלים המבוארים בסוף סנהדרין. (שופטים, הלכות ממרים פ"א):
He prohibited us from dissenting against those who are the masters of the tradition and against their derivations from the commandments through the [methods] of Torah. And that is His saying, "you shall not turn aside from the thing that they tell you, right or left" (Deuteronomy 17:11). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 154:4) is, "'You shall not turn aside' - that is a negative commandment." And one who transgresses this negative commandment is a rebellious elder; and is liable for strangulation - and that is according to the received conditions explained at the end of Sanhedrin.(See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Rebels 11.)
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 prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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
- Death by strangulation (ḥenek)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- 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)
- CD 9-10 (juridical procedure of the Damascus community) reinterpreted it
Rabbinic aggadah
- b. Bava Metzia 59b (Oven of Akhnai) expanded it homiletically
- Sifre Deuteronomy 154 The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic exposition
Josephus
- Ant. 4.218 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:2-3 reinterpreted it 'the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat... do whatever they teach' — read as an echo of obedience to teaching authority, immediately qualified by polemic against the teachers' conduct
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 a judge who renders a verdict, has it sealed, then alters his own decision is removed from the judicial bench and pays a 12-fold penalty — penalizes a judge's reversal of his own authorized ruling Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §5 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- hittite laws one who rejects (defies) the judgment of the king has his house destroyed; one who rejects the judgment of a dignitary is decapitated — penalizing defiance of authoritative judicial verdicts Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §173 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (Brill, 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.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Capital punishment for a jurist who, after being overruled, persists in his own legal judgment treats intellectual dissent as a capital offense; this directly contradicts the principle that individuals retain the right to form and act on sincere judgments of law and conscience.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment constitutionalizes a single religious court as the ultimate authority on law, with capital enforcement of its rulings against internal dissenters; this is structurally incompatible with pluralist legal orders in which dissent, appeal, and minority legal opinion are protected.
-
Article 3 (right to life) and Article 19 (freedom of opinion)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Execution (henek, strangulation) for expressing and acting on a dissenting legal ruling violates both UDHR Article 3's guarantee of the right to life and Article 19's protection of freedom of opinion; no opinion offense justifies capital punishment under these standards.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Capital punishment for the non-violent, non-injurious act of issuing a divergent legal ruling is irreconcilable with modern proportionality doctrine, which reserves the death penalty for the most serious crimes involving loss of life.
-
UDHR Article 10; ICCPR Article 14
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The zaqen mamre procedure requires a capital verdict by the same institution whose authority the defendant contests, with no independent appellate review; this structural conflict-of-interest is incompatible with the right to an impartial tribunal guaranteed by UDHR Article 10 and ICCPR Article 14.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the Great Sanhedrin of seventy-one ceased to function with the destruction of the Second Temple; capital jurisdiction for the zaqen mamre has been inoperative since 70 CE, though the de jure norm remains in classical halakhah.