He shall bring his trespass offering to Yahweh: a ram without defect from the flock, according to your estimation, for a trespass offering, to the priest.
To keep a perpetual fire burning on the altar
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֵשׁ תָּמִיד תּוּקַד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לֹא תִכְבֶּה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להבעיר אש על המזבח בכל יום תמיד. והוא אמרו יתעלה אש תמיד תוקד על המזבח, וזה לא יתכן אלא במה שצוה בהתמדת שום האש על העצים בבקר ובין הערבים. כמו שנתבאר בשני של יומא ובמסכת תמיד. ובבאור אמרו אע"פ שהאש יורדת מן השמים מצוה להביא מן ההדיוט. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו ביומא ותמיד, רוצה לומר מצות מערכת האש אשר יעשו בכל יום במזבח. (צו את אהרן, עבודה תמידין ומוספין פרק ב'):
That is that He commanded us to burn a fire on the altar every day continuously. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "A continual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out" (Leviticus 6:6). And this is only possible with His having commanded to place fire continually on the wood in the morning and in the afternoon, as it is explained in the second chapter of Yoma and in Tractate Tamid. And in the explanation, they said that even though the fire descends from the heavens, it is a commandment to bring it from the commoners (humans). And the laws of this commandment - meaning the arrangement of the fire which they are to do every day on the altar - have already been explained in Yoma and in Tamid (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Daily Offerings and Additional Offerings 2.)
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
- Binding in the land of Israel
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
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, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 7:3 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.285-288 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.199 affirmed it
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.