but it shall be, when evening comes, he shall bathe himself in water. When the sun is down, he shall come within the camp.
A ritually impure person shall not enter the camp of the Levites (the Temple mount)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהָיָה לִפְנוֹת־עֶרֶב יִרְחַץ בַּמָּיִם וּכְבֹא הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ יָבֹא אֶל־תּוֹךְ הַמַּחֲנֶה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר לכל טמא להכנס תוך מחנה לוייה שכמוהו לדורות הר הבית כמו שבארו בריש מסכת כלים (פ"א מ"ח) ושם התבאר אסור ביאת טמאים להר הבית. והכתוב הבא על לאו זה הוא אמרו איש אשר לא יהיה טהור מקרה לילה לא יבא אל תוך המחנה. ובגמרא פסחים (דף ס"ח) ויצא אל מחוץ למחנה זה מחנה שכינה, כמו שבארנו בל"א ממצות עשה, ולא יבא אל תוך המחנה זה מחנה לויה מתקיף ליה רבינא ולימא אידי ואידי מחנה שכינה ולעבור עליו בעשה ולא תעשה אם כן לכתוב קרא ולא יבא אל תוך כלומר שזה ירצה לומר ולא יבא אל תוכו, המחנה למה לי ליתן לו מחנה אחר והוא מחנה לויה שהוא גם כן לא יבא אל תוכו. ולשון ספרי לא יבא אל תוך המחנה זהו מצות לא תעשה. וכבר התבאר משפטי מצוה זו בשלישי ממדות. (כי תצא, שם):
That He prohibited any impure person from entering the camp of the Levites - and that which is similar to it for [all] the generations: The Temple Mount, as they explained at the beginning of Tractate Kelim (Kelim 1:8). And the prohibition of impure people entering the Temple Mount is explained there. And the verse that comes about this is His saying, "A man that has been rendered unclean by a nocturnal emission [...] shall not enter within the camp" (Deuteronomy 23:11). And in the Gemara, Pesachim (Pesachim 68a): "'And he must leave the camp' - this is the camp of the Divine Presence," as we explained in Commandment 31 of the Positive Commandments. "'And he shall not enter the camp' - that is the Levite camp. Ravina strongly objects, 'Say that both this and that are the camp of the Divine Presence, to transgress with it, a positive commandment and a negative commandment!' If so, let the verse write, '[And he must leave the camp,] and he shall not enter within'" - meaning, that it would want to say, "And he shall not enter within it." "Why do I need [the repetition of the word,] 'the camp?' To give him a different camp" - and that is the camp of the Levites - that he may also not enter into it. And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 255:5) is, "'He shall not enter within the camp - that is a negative commandment." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the third [chapter] of Middot. (See Ki Tetzei; 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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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
- Binding in the land of Israel
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, 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
- 1QM VII:3-7 read it more strictly
- 4QMMT B read it more strictly
Josephus
- Ant. 3.261-262 affirmed it
- War 5.227 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel attestation
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 the Temple Mount while impure from nocturnal emission, a non-voluntary bodily event; modern penal frameworks reject corporal punishment for non-voluntary physiological conditions treated as ceremonially disqualifying.
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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 zone while in a state of ritual impurity arising from a normal, involuntary bodily function 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 prohibited sacred zone when that prohibition is grounded solely in ritual-purity status arising from an involuntary bodily event; the malkot sanction 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.