or has found that which was lost, and lied about it, and swearing to a lie—in any of these things that a man sins in his actions—
The priests shall remove the ashes from the altar daily
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהֵרִים אֶת־הַדֶּשֶׁן אֲשֶׁר תֹּאכַל הָאֵשׁ אֶת־הָעֹלָה עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְשָׂמוֹ אֵצֶל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שנצטוו הכהנים להסיר הדשן בכל יום מעל גבי המזבח, והיא הנקראת תרומת הדשן, והוא אמרו יתברך שמו ולבש הכהן מדו בד והרים את הדשן. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בתמיד ובכפורים. (צו, תמידין ומוספין פרק ב'):
That is that He commanded the priests to remove the ashes from off the altar every day. And this is what is called, removing the ashes. And that is His, may His name be blessed, saying, "he shall put on other vestments, and carry the ashes" (Leviticus 6:3). And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tamid and Yoma. (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
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.254-256 read it allegorically Philo's treatment of altar service and the disposal of sacrificial remains is read allegorically; the precise application to ash-removal is interpretive rather than explicit.
Josephus
- Ant. 3.230 rationalized it Falls within Josephus's general account of the sacrificial system; the application specifically to the daily ash-removal rite is inferential rather than explicit.
The New Testament
- Hebrews 13:11-13 The catalog describes this reception as: typologized The motif of carcasses/remains burned 'outside the camp' is typologically applied to the suffering of Jesus 'outside the gate'; the disposal-outside-camp protocol is spiritualized rather than the ash-removal rite itself.
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 maintenance Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence provisions on temple cleanliness and maintenance of cultic installations (COS 1.83) McMahon, 'Instructions to Priests and Temple Officials (CTH 264),' in Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture 1.83 (Leiden: Brill, 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.