Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in it.
The priests shall wash their hands and feet before serving in the Temple
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְרָחֲצוּ אַהֲרֹן וּבָנָיו מִמֶּנּוּ אֶת־יְדֵיהֶם וְאֶת־רַגְלֵיהֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה הכהנים לרחוץ ידיהם ורגליהם כל זמן שיצטרכו להכנס בהיכל ולעבוד עבודה, וזו היא קדוש ידים ורגלים, והוא אמרו יתעלה ורחצו אהרן ובניו את ידיהם ואת רגליהם בבאם אל אהל מועד. ומצות עשה זו יתחייב העובר עליה מיתה בידי שמים, רוצה לומר שכהן ששמש במקדש בלא קדוש ידים ורגלים חייב מיתה בידי שמים והוא אמרו יתברך שמו ירחצו מים ולא ימותו. וכבר נתבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשלמות בשני מזבחים. (כי תשא, הלכות ביאת המקדש פרק ח'):
That is that He commanded the priests to wash their hands and their feet any time they needed to enter the [Temple] chamber and do the service. And this is the sanctification of the hands and the feet. And this is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And let Aharon and his sons wash their hands and feet [from it]. When they enter the Tent of Meeting" (Exodus 30:19-20) And one who transgresses this positive commandment is liable for death at the hands of the Heavens - meaning to say that a priest that serves in the Temple without sanctification of the hands and feet is liable for death at the hands of the Heavens. And that is His, may His name be blessed, saying, "they shall wash with water, that they may not die" (Exodus 30:20). And the regulations of this commandment have already been completely explained in the second chapter of Zevachim. (See Parashat Ki Tissa; Mishneh Torah, The Chosen Temple 8.)
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 ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
- Death at the hands of Heaven (mitah bidei shamayim)
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 Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: non binding (Temple contingent)
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Vita Mosis 2.138 read it allegorically Symbolic reading of the laver and the washing of hands and feet as purification of action and conduct
Josephus
- Ant. 3.114 affirmed it Describes the bronze laver and priestly ablution within his Tabernacle account
The New Testament
- Mark 7:1-5 The catalog describes this reception as: critiqued Pharisaic extension of priestly hand-washing purity to lay meals, presented as a tradition critiqued by Jesus
- John 13:1-17 read it spiritually Jesus' washing of disciples' feet reinterprets foot-washing as an act of humility/service rather than cultic purification
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:6 carried a parallel
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.
- hittite instructions temple-purity ablution before handling sacred objects Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence CTH 264, temple-personnel cleanness provisions requiring bodily purity before handling divine offerings (no discrete paragraph number cited) Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts (2013)
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.