“ ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh.
Not to take vengeance against another
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִקֹּם וְלֹא־תִטֹּר אֶת־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הוא שהזהיר שלא לנקום קצתנו מקצתנו, והוא שתעשה מעשה אחד ולא תסור מלחפש אחריו עד שתגמלהו כמעשהו הרע אשר יביאהו כמו שהביאך, והזהיר מזה באמרו לא תקום. ובספרא עד היכן הוא כחה של נקימה אמר לו השאילני מגלך ולא השאילו ולמחר אמר לו השאילני קרדומך ואומר לו לא אשאילך כדרך שלא השאלתני מגלך לכך נאמר לא תקום, ועל זה הדמיון ההיקש בכל הענינים. (שם, שם):
That is that He prohibited - that some of us not take revenge upon some of us. And that is that a deed was done, and you do not stop seeking him out until you repay him according to his evil deed; such that you bring upon him, [just] like what he brought upon you. And He prohibited this with His saying, "You shall not take revenge" (Leviticus 19:18). And in the [Sifra] (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 4:10): "To where does the strength of revenge extend? [If] one said to another, 'Lend me your sickle,' but he did not lend [it to] him. And the next day, the other said to him, 'Lend me your spade'; and he said to him, 'I will not lend it to you, just as you did not lend me your sickle.' Hence it is stated, 'You shall not take revenge." And according to this example is the paradigm for all other matters. (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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 “you shall not take vengeance” as a prohibition on repaying a wrong in kind, which the sources illustrate with a refusal to lend answered by a refusal to lend.
Maimonides defines vengeance by the classic case: one asks to borrow an item and is refused, and the next day the other comes to borrow and he answers, “I will not lend to you, just as you did not lend to me.” He rules this forbidden and frames the commandment as uprooting the vindictive trait from the heart, urging a person to let the matter go rather than repay it.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 7:7; Sefer HaMitzvot (12th c.)
The Talmud draws the line between vengeance and the grudge that follows it, using the borrowing case to show that even a lawful-seeming refusal, when it is done to pay back a slight, falls under the prohibition.
Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 23a (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 23a — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
Linked rather than reproduced — Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 23a: No public-domain or CC0 English translation of this passage is available.
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.
The developed public-domain rationale gathered here frames the commandment as the shaping of character rather than a matter for the courts; a traditional treatment engaging the penal dimension that the on-page conflict summaries raise is not yet gathered.
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: scholarly consensus.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against The normative ANE and Iron Age kinship-based system of private vengeance and blood retaliation (go'el hadam, blood-feud), which surrounding cultures regulated through proportional retaliation (Code of Hammurabi §§196–201, lex talionis) or compensation (Hittite Laws) rather than prohibiting — the Levitical commandment uniquely forbids private naqam (active retaliation) and natar (grudge-bearing) as interpersonal postures, per Greenberg and Wright, going beyond the ANE tradition of limiting vengeance to abolishing it at the individual level and reserving retributive justice to communal structures and ultimately to YHWH (Deut 32:35)..
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)
- 1QS 10:17-18 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel affirmation
- CD 9:2-8 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifra Qedoshim 4:10-11 expanded it homiletically
The New Testament
- Romans 12:17-21 affirmed it Paul fuses the anti-vengeance ethic with Deut 32:35 ('Vengeance is mine') and Prov 25:21-22
- Matthew 5:38-42 read it more strictly radicalizes non-retaliation beyond grudge-abandonment to non-resistance
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 42:40-43 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.
- code of hammurabi lex talionis / regulated proportional retaliation Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§196-201 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws fixed compensation (persons/silver) for killing in a quarrel or by accident, in lieu of blood retaliation Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§1-4 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Rambam rules that the active form of naqam (vengeance as an overt refusal to lend in retaliation) incurs lashes (malkot); modern penal proportionality holds that corporal punishment is categorically impermissible, and the prescription of flogging for an interpersonal refusal to extend assistance represents a disproportionate sanction for a non-violent act.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prescribed sanction of judicial flogging for an act of personal retaliation (refusing to lend an item to someone who previously refused you) is incompatible in method with post-Enlightenment criminal codes, which have abolished corporal punishment and would not criminalize such private interpersonal conduct at all.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that court-imposed malkot lapsed with the destruction of the Sanhedrin's corporeal jurisdiction; the second prohibition in the verse (natar, grudge-bearing) is in any case lo lokin — no lashes even de jure — since it is a purely internal state.
Leviticus 19:18a reads, "You shall not take vengeance and you shall not bear a grudge against the children of your people" (לֹא־תִקֹּם וְלֹא־תִטֹּר אֶת־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ). The verse contains two distinct prohibitions: נקם (naqam, 'to avenge, to take vengeance') and נטר (natar, 'to bear a grudge, to harbor resentment'). The Talmud (b. Yoma 23a) distinguishes them with a memorable illustration: If you ask to borrow your neighbor's sickle and he refuses, and the next day he asks to borrow your axe: *vengeance* is refusing and saying, 'Just as you refused me, I refuse you.' *Bearing a grudge* is lending the axe but saying, 'I'm not like you — I'm lending you mine even though you wouldn't lend me yours.' Both responses are prohibited: the first because it perpetuates the cycle of retaliation, the second because it preserves the resentment even while performing the correct action. The verse demands not just correct behavior but the genuine abandonment of the grievance.
The prohibition against vengeance in Leviticus 19:18 must be distinguished from the broader biblical tradition of legitimate retribution. The Hebrew Bible contains extensive retribution language — the lex talionis ('eye for eye,' Exod 21:24), blood vengeance by the go'el hadam (Num 35:19–27), and YHWH's own acts of vengeance against enemies (Deut 32:35, 'Vengeance is mine'). The Levitical prohibition is specifically about interpersonal grudges within the community, not about judicial punishment or divine justice. The rabbis were careful to maintain this distinction: courts may impose penalties, God may punish the wicked, but private citizens may not take revenge. This creates a two-track system: institutional justice is authorized; personal vengeance is not. The practical effect is to channel the desire for retribution through communal structures rather than allowing it to fragment the social fabric through escalating feuds.
Ancient Near Eastern societies generally recognized the right of private vengeance, particularly in cases of homicide, and then attempted to regulate and limit it. The Code of Hammurabi's lex talionis (§§196–201) channels retaliatory impulses into proportional responses. The Hittite Laws allow monetary compensation as an alternative to physical retaliation. Middle Assyrian Laws prescribe specific retaliations for specific offenses. What none of these codes do is *prohibit vengeance altogether* in interpersonal relations. The Levitical prohibition against naqam is, in this comparative context, remarkable: it does not merely regulate revenge but forbids it as an interpersonal posture. This goes further than proportional justice (limiting retaliation) to something approaching restorative justice (abandoning retaliation entirely).
The verse concludes with the love command — "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" — and the sequence neatly encapsulates the ethical logic: the path from vengeance to love runs through the letting go of grudges. The New Testament explicitly engages this tradition: Paul quotes the Deuteronomic formula, 'Vengeance is mine, says the Lord' (Romans 12:19, citing Deut 32:35), urging Christians to overcome evil with good. Jesus' teaching to 'turn the other cheek' (Matt 5:39) extends the Levitical anti-vengeance ethic to a more radical non-retaliation. In rabbinic ethics, the prohibition became a cornerstone of the concept of ma'avir al midotav — 'passing over one's measures,' i.e., being willing to forgo what one is technically owed. The Talmud (b. Yoma 23a) praises one who is insulted and does not insult back, who hears themselves degraded and does not respond, who acts from love and accepts suffering with joy. This transformed a community-internal grudge prohibition into a comprehensive ethic of forbearance that continues to influence moral thought across traditions.