Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh. On the eighth day shall be a holy convocation to you. You shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh. It is a solemn assembly; you shall do no regular work.
Not to do any work on Shemini Atzeret
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עֲצֶרֶת הִוא 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 שמיני של חג. והוא אמרו כל מלאכת עבודה לא תעשו. ודע שאלו הששה ימים טובים כל מי שיעשה מלאכה איזו שתהיה באיזה יום מהם לוקה אלא אם כן תהיה מלאכה ממה שיצטרך באוכל נפש כמו שבא בכתוב באחד מהם אשר יאכל לכל נפש הוא לבדו יעשה לכם, והוא הדין לשאר יום טוב. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת ביצה. (שם, שם):
He prohibited doing work on the eighth day of the Holiday (Sukkot). And that is His saying, "you shall not do any work of labor" (Leviticus 23:36). And know that anyone who does work - whatever it may be - on one of these six days is lashed; unless it is from what is required for [the preparation of] food of sustenance (okhel nefesh). As it appears in Scripture about one of them, "For that which will be eaten by every person (yeakhel lekhol nefesh), that alone may be done for you" (Exodus 12:16). And the same is the law for the other holidays. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Beitzah. (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 Contested
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
- Numbers Rabbah 21:24 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.211 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.247 affirmed it
The New Testament
- John 7:37 The catalog describes this reception as: alluded 'On the last, great day of the festival' may refer to the culminating day of the Sukkot season; whether this denotes the seventh day of Sukkot or the eighth-day atzeret is debated
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 Shemini Atzeret; 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 Shemini Atzeret 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.