“ ‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary; I am Yahweh.
To revere and show awe toward the Temple
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ וּמִקְדָּשִׁי תִּירָאוּ אֲנִי יְהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לירא מן המקדש הזה מאד עד שנשים בנפשנו משא הפחד והיראה וזה מיראת מקדש והוא אמרו יתעלה את מקדשי תיראו. וגדר זאת היראה כמו שזכרו בספרא אי זהו מורא לא יכנס להר הבית במקלו ובמנעלו ובאפונדתו ובאבק שעל גבי רגליו ולא יעשה קפנדריא ולמדוהו מקל וחומר. וכבר התבאר במקומות מהתלמוד שאין מותר לשבת בעזרה אלא מלכי בית דוד בלבד, וזהו כלן באמרו יתעלה ומקדשי תיראו, וזהו יתחייב לעולם ואפילו בזמננו זה שהוא חרב בעונותינו שרבו, ולשון ספרי אין לי אלא בזמן שבית המקדש קיים בזמן שאין בית המקדש קיים מנין תלמוד לומר את שבתותי תשמורו ומקדשי תיראו מה שמירת שבת לעולם אף מורא מקדש לעולם, ושם נאמר גם כן לא מן המקדש אתה ירא אלא ממי ששכן שכינתו במקום הזה. (בהר סיני, הלכות בית הבחירה פ"ז):
That is that He commanded us to fear this Temple very much, to the extent that we place a burden of fear and awe upon ourselves - and that this be from the fear of the Temple. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall fear My sanctuary" (Leviticus 19:30). And the designation of this fear is like that which they mentioned in the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 7:9), "Which is fear? One should not enter the Temple Mount with his staff, with his shoes, with his money-belt and with the dust on his feet; and he must not make a short-cut of it and, a fortiori, [not spit]." And it has already been explained that it is only permitted for kings of the House of David to sit in [its] courtyard. And this is all from His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall fear My sanctuary." And this is obligatory forever; and even in our times, when it has been destroyed on account of the increase in our transgressions. And this is the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 7:8), "This tells me only of the time when the Temple existed. From where [do we know that the same is true] even when the Temple does not exist? [Hence] we learn to say, 'My Sabbaths you shall keep, and My sanctuary you shall fear' (Leviticus 19:30) - just as the keeping of the Shabbat is eternal, so too, is fear of the Temple eternal." And there (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 7:7) it is also said, "It is not the Temple that you fear, but He who makes His Divine Presence dwell in that place." (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, The Chosen Temple 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 flat, unconditional command
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
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
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 45-47 read it more strictly
- 4QMMT B read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifra Qedoshim, parashah 7 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.66-78 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed and spiritualized
Josephus
- Contra Apionem 2.193-198 affirmed it
- Bellum Judaicum 5.193-194 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 21:12-13 reinterpreted it Temple-cleansing episode invokes sanctity of the house against profane commerce ('den of robbers,' citing Jer 7:11)
- John 2:13-17 reinterpreted it 'Zeal for your house'; reverence motif redirected toward Jesus' body as the new temple (2:21)
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:125 carried a thematic 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 gather in reverence before Marduk's completed temple Esagila, establishing the Mesopotamian puluhtu (fearful reverence) ideal for sacred precincts — the conceptual ANE parallel to the Israelite mora miqdash (reverence for the sanctuary) commanded in Lev 19:30. Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet VI, lines 50-130 (construction of Esagila and the gods' assembly within it) 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.