“ ‘The meat that touches any unclean thing shall not be eaten. It shall be burned with fire. As for the meat, everyone who is clean may eat it;
To burn the flesh of consecrated offerings that have become impure
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהַבָּשָׂר אֲשֶׁר־יִגַּע בְּכָל־טָמֵא לֹא יֵאָכֵל בָּאֵשׁ יִשָּׂרֵף
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה לשרוף קדשים שנטמאו, והוא אמרו והבשר אשר יגע בכל טמא. ובגמרא שבת (דף כ"ה) בא לבאר הטעם שבעבורו אסור להדליק בשמן תרומה שנטמא ביום טוב ואמרו בזה שבתון עשה הוא וה"ל יום טוב עשה ולא תעשה ואין עשה דוחה את לא תעשה ועשה. וענין זה המאמר עשיית מלאכה ביום טוב אסור והעושה אותה עובר על מצות עשה שהוא ביטל מצות עשה. והוא אמרו יתעלה ביום טוב יהיה לכם שבתון ועובר על מצות לא תעשה כי עשה את מה שהוזהר ממנו, והוא אמרו כל מלאכה לא יעשה בהם כלומר ביום טוב, ושריפת קדשים הוא מצות עשה, ולכן אינו מותר לשרוף אותו ביום טוב בעבור השרש שזכר אין עשה דוחה את לא תעשה ועשה. ושם גם כן אמרו (שם) כשם שמצוה לשרוף קדשים שנטמאו כך מצוה לשרוף שמן תרומה שנטמא. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בפסחים וסוף תמורה. (צו, פסולי המוקדשין פי"ט):
That is that He commanded to burn consecrated items that have become impure. And that is His saying, "Meat that touches anything impure [... shall be burned in fire]" (Leviticus 7:19). And in the Gemara Shabbat (Shabbat 25a), it comes to explain the reason for that which it is forbidden to kindle priestly tithes of oil that have become impure on a holiday - and they said about this, "'Shabbaton' (Leviticus 23:24) [indicates] it is a positive commandment, such that [rest from work on] the holiday is a positive commandment and a negative commandment. And a positive commandment does not push off a negative commandment and a positive commandment." And the content of this statement is that the doing of work on a holiday is forbidden: And one who does it transgresses a positive commandment, since [work] is the negation of a positive commandment. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying about the holiday, "it shall be a Shabbaton for you." And he [also] transgresses a negative commandement, since he is doing what has been forbidden to him. And that is His saying, "no work shall be done on them" (Exodus 12:16) - meaning on the holidays. Whereas the burning of consecrated items is a positive commandment. Hence it is not permitted to burn it on a holiday, on account of the principle that it mentioned: "A positive commandment does not push off a negative commandment and a positive commandment." And there, they also said, "Just like it is a commandment to burn consecrated items that have become impure, so too is it a commandment to burn priestly tithes of oil that have become impure." And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Pesachim and at the end of Termurah. (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Things Forbidden on the Altar.)
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 1.222-234 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.224-236 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.
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic ritual texts prescribe burning (šrp) as a disposal/offering method within sacrificial sequences, offering a thematic parallel to the Israelite requirement to destroy consecrated flesh by fire rather than leaving it in an indeterminate sacral state; the parallel is at the level of shared cultic vocabulary and practice, not a direct purity-disposal rule Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.39 and related ritual texts (šrp 'burning' procedures within sacrificial sequences) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
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.