You shall put both male and female outside of the camp so that they don’t defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.”
A ritually impure person shall not enter the Temple precincts
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא יְטַמְּאוּ אֶת־מַחֲנֵיהֶם אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי שֹׁכֵן בְּתוֹכָם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר כל טמא מהכנס במקדש (*המשכן) וכל שדומה לו לדורות כל העזרה ומשער נקנור לפנים שהוא עזרת ישראל. והוא אמרו יתעלה ולא יטמאו את מחניהם רוצה לומר מחנה שכינה. ובגמרא מכות (דף י"ד:) אמרו הבא אל המקדש טמא כתיב עונש וכתיב אזהרה, עונש כי את מקדש ה' טמא ונכרתה, אזהרה ולא יטמאו את מחניהם. ובמכילתא צו את בני ישראל וישלחו בעשה ומנין בלא תעשה אמרת ולא יטמאו עוד. וכבר נכפלה האזהרה בזה הענין בלשון אחר, והוא אמרו יתעלה ביולדת ואל המקדש לא תבא. ובספרי אמרו לפי שנאמר והזרתם את בני ישראל שומע אני בין מפניו בין מאחוריו והוא טמא יהיה חייב כרת תלמוד לומר ואל המקדש לא תבא. ושם התבאר שדין יולדת ודין שאר טמאים שוים בזה. ובספרי אמרו באמרו יתעלה ואם לא יכבס ובשרו לא ירחץ הא כיצד על רחיצת גופו ענוש כרת ועל כבוס בגדים בארבעים ומנין שאינו מדבר אלא בטומאת מקדש וקדשיו הזהיר וענש וכו'. הנה התבאר כי העובר על לאו זה אם היה מזיד ענוש כרת ואם היה שוגג מביא קרבן עולה ויורד כמו שבארנו במצוה ע"ב ממצות עשה. וכבר התבאר משפטי מצוה זו בריש שבועות ובהוריות. (נשא את ראש, שם פ"ג):
That He prohibited any impure person from entering the Sanctuary (the Tabernacle) - and everything that is similar to it for [all] the generations: All of the courtyard and from the Gate of Nikanor onwards, which is the courtyard of the Israelites. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "so that they shall not render their camp impure" (Numbers 5:3). And in the Gemara, Makkot (Makkot 14b), they said, "One who entered the Temple [while] impure - a punishment is written and a prohibition is written: The punishment - 'he has rendered impure the Tabernacle of the Lord, and that soul shall be excised' (Numbers 19:13). The prohibition - 'so that they shall not render their camp impure.'" And in the Mekhilta: "'Command the Children of Israel to send away from the camp' - is with a positive commandment. But from where [do we know] it is [also] with a negative commandment? You can say, 'so that they shall not render their camp impure.'" And the prohibition about this content has already been repeated with different language; and that His, may He be exalted, saying about a woman who has given birth, "and she shall not come into the sanctuary" (Leviticus 12:4). And in the [Sifra] (Sifra, Tazria Parashat Yoledet, Section 1:1), they said, "Because it is stated (Leviticus 15:31), 'And you shall separate the Children of Israel,' I would understand - whether [one enters] from its front or from its back and he is impure, he is liable. [Hence] we learn to say, 'and she shall not come into the sanctuary.'"And there it is explained that the law of a woman who has given birth and the law of other impure people is the same with regards to this. And they [also] said in the [Sifra] (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Chapter 12:13-14), about His saying "But if he does not wash and does not bathe his body" (Leviticus 17:16), "How is this? For [failure in] the bathing of his body, the punishment is excision, but for [failure in] the washing of his clothes, it is with forty [lashes]. And from where [do we know] that it is speaking here of his rendering the sanctuary and its consecrated objects impure? It prohibited and punished, etc." Behold it has been made clear that one who transgresses this negative commandment - if he was intentional, he is punished with excision; and if he was inadvertent, he must bring a variable offering, as we explained in Commandment 72 of the Positive Commandments. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained at the beginning of Shevuot and in Horayot. (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Admission into the Sanctuary 3.)
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
- Karet — being 'cut off'
Ritual remedy
- A sin-offering (ḥatat)
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 Binding, with modification
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) XLV-XLVI read it more strictly
- 4QMMT B read it more strictly
- 1QM VII:3-6 The catalog describes this reception as: extended application applies camp-purity ideology (exclusion of the impure and blemished) to the eschatological war camp rather than directly to Temple access
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.261 read it allegorically purification before approaching the sanctuary read as purity of soul
Josephus
- Ant. 3.261-262 rationalized it
- Contra Apionem 2.103-104 The catalog describes this reception as: descriptive describes the graded courts and exclusion of the impure in apologetic-descriptive terms
The New Testament
- Acts 21:28-29 The catalog describes this reception as: attested enforcement Paul accused of bringing Greeks into the Temple, defiling the holy place — reflects later enforcement of the exclusion of the impure/foreign from sacred space
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.
- hittite instructions purity restrictions on access to cultic personnel and precincts Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§ 1-21 (purity and access provisions) Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions (SBL WAW 31, 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 entering Temple precincts in a state of ritual impurity that frequently arises from unavoidable events (handling a corpse, skin disease, involuntary discharge); modern penal frameworks reject corporal punishment for non-voluntary bodily or circumstantial conditions.
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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 entering a sacred space while in an involuntary ritual state -- e.g., arising from handling a deceased family member -- 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 presence in a space prohibited only on religious-purity grounds arising from common unavoidable life events; the malkot sanction for impure Temple entry exceeds any proportionate response 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.