“ ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.
Not to put another person to shame publicly
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר שלא לבייש קצתנו את קצתנו וזהו הנקרא מלבין פני חבירו, ואזהרה שבאה בזה הוא אמרו הוכח תוכיח את עמיתך וגו'. ובספרי מנין שאם הוכחתו ארבע וחמש פעמים שיחזור ויוכיח תלמוד לומר הוכח תוכיח יכול אפילו אתה מוכיחו ופניו משתנות תלמוד לומר ולא תשא עליו חטא, אמנם הפשט הוא שהזהיר שלא תחשוב לו עון ותזכרהו. (שם, שם פ"ז):
He prohibited - that some of us not embarrass others of us; and that is what is called, whitening the face of one's fellow. And the prohibition that comes about this is His saying, "you shall surely reprove your kinsman, etc." (Leviticus 19:17). And in the [Sifra] (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 4:8): "From where [do we know] that if he reproved him four or five times [and he did not take heed], he should keep on doing so? [Hence] we learn to say, 'you shall surely reprove your kinsman.' Perhaps [he must do so] even if his face changes color (in shame). [Hence] we learn to say, 'but do not bear sin because of him.'" However the simple understanding is that He prohibited - that you not think of him as a sinner and remember it. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Human Dispositions 7.)
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
- A monetary penalty
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
Two readings, side by side
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this is one of them.
In the traditional Jewish reading How the Jewish legal (halakhic) tradition reads and defends this commandment, in its own developed voice — the classical reasons given for the commandments (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).
The tradition reads the verse’s closing words, “and do not bear sin on his account,” as a caution that even a warranted rebuke must not shame the other in public.
Maimonides derives from the end of the rebuke verse that one who corrects a fellow must not do so in a way that shames him before others; the duty to reprove and the ban on humiliating are read together, so that the correction never turns into public disgrace.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 6:8; Sefer HaMitzvot (12th c.)
The Talmud treats shaming another in public as among the gravest interpersonal wrongs — likening the draining of color from a person’s face to bloodshed, and teaching that one should sooner suffer than humiliate a fellow in public.
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 58b–59a (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 58b — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab, Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59a — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
Linked rather than reproduced — Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 58b: No public-domain or CC0 English translation of this passage is available.
In the source’s own words — Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59a:
Mar Zutra bar Tuvia said in the name of Rav, and some quote it thus: Rav Chana bar Bizna said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Chasida, and some quote it thus: Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai “It is better for a man to throw himself into a fiery furnace, and to not embarrassed their fellow in public.” What is the source for this? From Tamar, and it says, “When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law.” (Genesis 38:25)
Reproduced here: Bava Metzia 59a only.
English: Sefaria Community Translation (CC0) — a volunteer translation, reproduced as it stands. Via Sefaria; translator’s notes omitted.
The Sefer HaChinuch gives the reason that a person’s standing in the eyes of others is dear to him as life itself, so that stripping it away in public is counted among the injuries the Torah most sternly guards against.
Sefer HaChinuch (13th c.)
Rabbinic citations here link to the source text at Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. Where a public-domain or CC0 English translation — one anyone may reuse — of the exact passage cited has been verified and is short enough to set out in full, the passage is also reproduced here in the source’s own words; where it is not, the citation says which of those conditions it missed. Which passages are reproduced is a matter of licensing, length and verification — never of how much a source matters.
Modern critical scholarship How modern academic biblical scholarship reads this text — the source-critical and form-critical school. Its hedges are shown as it states them; nothing here is presented as settled fact.
Modern source-critical scholarship assigns this text to the Holiness Code (H).
Scholarly confidence in this reading: a scholarly majority.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against Ancient Near Eastern legal practice of institutionalizing public humiliation as judicial sanction and social enforcement — most directly the Code of Hammurabi §127 (half-shaving of the false accuser as court-imposed shame) and Middle Assyrian Laws §A.40 (public stripping and striking of unveiled women as class-enforcement mechanism) — implicitly contrasted by the Holiness Code's prohibition of shaming as a category of interpersonal wrong independent of any factual falsehood, a distinction the comparative ANE legal record does not draw..
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 9:2-8 The catalog describes this reception as: reproof procedure development
- 1QS 5:24-6:1 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 85:11 The catalog describes this reception as: aggadic application
The New Testament
- Matthew 18:15 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic development private rebuke before public escalation; thematic analogy to the rebuke-but-not-shame logic of Lev 19:17 rather than direct textual citation
- Galatians 6:1 reinterpreted it restore the erring 'in a spirit of gentleness'
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 false accusation of unchastity against an ugbabtu-votaress or a man's wife; the false accuser is punished by half-shaving of the hair (judicial shame imposed on the accuser, not a prohibition of shaming) Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §127 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws public stripping/striking of unveiled women and prostitutes as social enforcement Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet A §40 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (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.
The prohibition against public shaming is derived from the tail end of Leviticus 19:17: "and you shall not bear sin on his account" (וְלֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא), read in conjunction with the rebuke obligation. The rabbinic tradition interpreted this as: rebuke your neighbor, *but* do not shame them publicly in the process. The commandment as traditionally enumerated thus represents a limitation on the rebuke obligation — you must correct wrongdoing, but you must not do so in a way that humiliates. This is not explicitly stated in the verse's plain sense (peshat), which is why this commandment represents a particularly creative piece of rabbinic exegesis. The Talmud (b. Berakhot 43b) drives the point home with a striking hyperbole: 'It is better for a person to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to publicly shame another' — language so extreme it signals how seriously the rabbis took reputational harm.
The concept of shame (בּוּשָׁה, bushah) in the ancient Near Eastern world was not merely an emotion but a social reality with devastating consequences. In honor-shame cultures — which characterized virtually all ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern societies — public humiliation could destroy a person's social standing, economic prospects, and family relationships. To be shamed was to lose one's place in the web of social reciprocity that sustained life. The Hebrew Bible reflects this acutely: Tamar's fear of shame (2 Sam 13:13), the shaming of David's ambassadors (2 Sam 10:4–5), and the countless Psalms pleading not to be 'put to shame' (Pss 25:2–3, 31:1, 69:7) all testify to shame's power. Prohibiting public shaming, in this context, is not about protecting feelings but about protecting a person's social existence.
The absence of explicit anti-shaming legislation in other ancient Near Eastern law codes is notable. The Code of Hammurabi addresses slander (§§1–2) and false accusation, but these concern factual falsehood, not the act of public humiliation per se. Hittite and Middle Assyrian laws similarly address defamation as a legal wrong but do not prohibit humiliation as a general ethical principle. The Israelite-rabbinic innovation is in identifying public shaming as a category of moral wrong independent of whether the accusation is true — you may not shame someone even if what you say about them is accurate. This is a remarkable ethical distinction that separates truthfulness from cruelty.
The Talmud (b. Bava Metzia 58b–59a) develops the prohibition against shaming extensively under the rubric of ona'at devarim — 'verbal oppression' or 'wronging with words.' This includes reminding a repentant sinner of their past, asking a ger about their ancestors, calling someone by a demeaning nickname, or embarrassing someone about their livelihood or origins. The famous statement that 'one who whitens another's face in public [i.e., causes them to blanch with shame] has no share in the World to Come' (b. Berakhot 43b, b. Bava Metzia 59a) places public shaming alongside murder, adultery, and idolatry in severity — the logic being that the blanching of the face represents a kind of 'bloodshed' (the blood drains away). Maimonides codifies the prohibition (Mishneh Torah, De'ot 6:8) and emphasizes that it applies even to children and dependents. The ethical sophistication here — distinguishing between correcting behavior and destroying dignity — remains genuinely relevant in an age of social media pile-ons and public shaming campaigns.