but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates;
Not to do any manner of work on the Sabbath
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תַעֲשֶׂה כָל־מְלָאכָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מעשות מלאכה בשבת. והוא אמרו לא תעשה כל מלאכה, והעובר על לאו זה באר בו הכתוב שהוא בכרת אם לא ידע בו הדיין ואם העידו עליו עדים חייב סקילה אם היה מזיד ואם היה שוגג חייב חטאת קבועה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת שבת. (יתרו, זמנים הלכות שבת פ"א):
He prohibited doing work on the Shabbat. And that is His saying, "you shall not do any work" (Exodus 20:10). And Scripture explains that one who transgresses this negative commandment is liable for excision - if the judge does not know about it. But if witnesses testify about it, he is liable for stoning - if it was volitional; and he is liable for a fixed sin-offering if it was inadvertent. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Shabbat. (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Shabbat 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 prohibition
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
- Death by stoning (sekilah)
At the hands of Heaven
- Karet — being 'cut off'
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, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 10:14-11:18 read it more strictly
- 4Q264a (4QHalakha B) read it more strictly
- Jubilees 2:17-33 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 11:5 expanded it homiletically
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shabbata 1 expanded it homiletically
- b. Shabbat 119b expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.60-64 rationalized it
- De Decalogo 96-105 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 1.33 affirmed it
- Contra Apionem 2.282 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 2:27-28 reinterpreted it Sabbath made for humanity; emphasizes humanitarian over restrictive reading
- Mark 3:1-6 reinterpreted it healing permitted on the Sabbath
- Colossians 2:16-17 treated it as abrogated Sabbath as a 'shadow' superseded in Christ
- John 5:16-18 reinterpreted it
The Church Fathers
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 18-23 rejected it polemically
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 15 read it spiritually
- Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos 4 read it spiritually
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:65-66 rejected it polemically
- Q 4:154 The catalog describes this reception as: polemically referenced
- Q 16:124 The catalog describes this reception as: polemically referenced
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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes death by stoning for intentional Sabbath melakhah (Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4; Numbers 15:32–36); any state imposition of capital punishment for a non-violent, religiously defined act of omission or commission conflicts with the modern principle that individuals have an inviolable right to conduct non-harmful activity free from lethal state coercion.
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Article 6 (right to life); Article 7 (prohibition of cruel punishment)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Articles 6 and 7 jointly prohibit the arbitrary taking of life and cruel or unusual punishment; the capital sentence for Sabbath work — a non-violent religious-observance offense — falls outside the narrow category of 'most serious crimes' to which the Covenant limits capital punishment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality doctrine precludes the death penalty for a non-violent offense such as performing labor on a designated rest day; Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4's prescription of stoning for intentional Sabbath melakhah is categorically disproportionate by any post-Enlightenment sentencing standard.
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abrogated_in_practice
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Great Sanhedrin following the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE); the stoning penalty is thus de jure in effect but has not been judicially imposed for nearly two millennia, rendering the conflict de jure rather than operative.