“ ‘No stranger shall eat of the holy thing: a foreigner living with the priests, or a hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing.
A non-priest shall not eat the most holy offerings
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכָל־זָר לֹא־יֹאכַל קֹדֶשׁ תּוֹשַׁב כֹּהֵן וְשָׂכִיר לֹא־יֹאכַל קֹדֶשׁ
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.
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite 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 1.119-121 rationalized it Philo treats priestly consumption rights and emoluments generally; the section addresses who may partake of sacred portions
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.230-232 affirmed it Josephus restates the priestly prerogative to consume designated sacrificial portions, reflecting the Second Temple practice of restricting most-holy food to the priesthood
The New Testament
- Mark 2:25-26 The catalog describes this reception as: cited as precedent Jesus cites David eating the showbread (most-holy) at Nob as precedent for subordinating cultic-consumption restriction to human need; the pericope relativizes rather than abolishes the restriction
- Matthew 12:3-4 The catalog describes this reception as: cited as precedent explicitly notes the bread 'was not lawful for him to eat, nor those with him, but only for the priests,' acknowledging the restriction while invoking the David precedent
- Luke 6:3-4 The catalog describes this reception as: cited as precedent synoptic parallel to the Nob showbread argument
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 sacrificial ritual texts record allotments of sacred portions to designated cultic personnel (khnm and qdsm), attesting a West Semitic pattern of hierarchically organized sacred-food distribution that offers comparative context — at the level of allotment rather than explicit exclusion — for the Israelite prohibition on non-priestly consumption of most-holy offerings Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.39 and 1.41/1.87 (the principal Ugaritic sacrificial ritual texts) 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.