That which is left of it Aaron and his sons shall eat. It shall be eaten without yeast in a holy place. They shall eat it in the court of the Tent of Meeting.
Not to eat the meal offering of a priest; it shall be wholly burned
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכָל־מִנְחַת כֹּהֵן כָּלִיל תִּהְיֶה לֹא תֵאָכֵל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מלאכול מנחת כהן. והוא אמרו יתעלה וכל מנחת כהן כליל תהיה לא תאכל. ונכפלה האזהרה בחביתי כהן גדול והיא מנחה גם כן. והעובר על לאו זה לוקה. ולשון ספרי כליל תהיה כל שהיא בכליל הרי הוא בלא תעשה על אכילתו. (צו את אהרן, הלכות מעשה הקרבנות פי"ד):
That He prohibited us from eating a meal-offering of a priest. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "For every meal-offering of the priest shall be wholly burnt; it shall not be eaten" (Leviticus 6:16). And this prohibition was repeated with the griddle-cakes of the high priest, which is also a meal-offering. And one who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed. And the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra, Tzav, Chapter 5:4) is, "'It shall be wholly burnt' - anything that involves [being] wholly burnt, involves a negative commandment for its eating." (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Sacrificial Procedure 14.)
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
- 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 As the catalog records it: non binding temple dependent
- 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 1.131-144 carried a parallel
Josephus
- Ant. 3.237 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.
- enuma elish The gods are provisioned with food offerings in Marduk's newly built temple, exemplifying the Mesopotamian nindabû (daily divine-food offering) model in which deities receive regular grain, bread, and produce — the conceptual background against which the Israelite minḥah grain offering as priestly sustenance operates. Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet VI, lines 115-130 (the gods' first feast in Esagila) Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013)
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 an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes flogging (malkot) for eating a priest's grain offering rather than consigning it entirely to the altar fire; modern penal frameworks recognize no legitimate basis for corporal punishment for non-violent violations of Temple-specific sacrificial protocols.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; imposing flogging for eating a category of grain offering that must be wholly burned on the altar violates this prohibition.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality doctrine precludes corporal punishment for non-violent ritual infractions specific to Temple sacrificial service; the malkot sanction for consuming a priest's meal offering exceeds any proportionate response recognized in post-Enlightenment penal theory.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
This commandment is doubly inoperative: both the Temple context on which the prohibition depends and the Sanhedrin's corporal jurisdiction have lapsed since 70 CE; the conflict is de jure, but no enforcement mechanism has existed since then.