On the first day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work.
Not to do any work on the first day of Sukkot
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ כָּל־מְלֶאכֶת עֲבֹדָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מעשות מלאכה ביום ראשון של חג. והוא אמרו כל מלאכת עבודה לא תעשו. (שם, שם):
He prohibited doing work on the first day of the Holiday (Sukkot). And that is His saying, "you shall not do any work of labor" (Leviticus 23:35). (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Rest on a Holiday 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
- Lashes (malkot)
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
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)
- 11Q19 (Temple Scroll) cols. 27-29 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 27 expanded it homiletically
- Vayikra Rabbah 30 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.204-213 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.244-247 affirmed it
The New Testament
- John 7:2-39 reinterpreted it Jesus teaching at the Feast of Tabernacles; the 'great day of the feast' (7:37) read against the water-libation rite. The passage concerns the festival generally rather than the first-day labor prohibition specifically.
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.
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic ritual-calendar text sometimes adduced as a seasonal analogue to a Canaanite autumn ingathering festival, comparable in season with Israelite Sukkot but without a universal work-cessation obligation extending to subordinates; the precise festival identification remains interpretive Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.41 (Ugaritic ritual calendar text) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
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 subjects individuals to corporal punishment (thirty-nine lashes) for performing productive labor on the first day of Sukkot; modern frameworks treating the person as sovereign over non-harmful activity preclude state-imposed flogging as a sanction for religiously defined inactivity.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; court-administered lashes for working on a festival holy day — a non-violent offense — constitutes corporal punishment that international human-rights law categorically prohibits.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality doctrine bars corporal punishment for a non-violent religious-observance offense; the thirty-nine-lash penalty for melekhet avodah on the first day of Sukkot is disproportionate by any post-Enlightenment sentencing standard.
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abrogated_in_practice
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Malkot jurisdiction requires a qualified Sanhedrin, which the rabbinic tradition regards as having lapsed since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE); the lashes penalty is de jure in effect but has not been judicially imposed for nearly two millennia.