“This is the statute of the law which Yahweh has commanded. Tell the children of Israel to bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is no defect, and which was never yoked.
To prepare the red heifer (parah adumah) for purification
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה יְהוָה לֵאמֹר דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ פָרָה אֲדֻמָּה תְּמִימָה אֲשֶׁר אֵין־בָּהּ מוּם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָלָה עָלֶיהָ עֹל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לעשות פרה אדומה כדי שיהיה אפרה מזומן למי שיצטרך אליו לטהרת טומאת מת כמו שאמר והיתה לעדת בני ישראל. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת פרה. (זאת חקת התורה, טהרה הלכות פרה אדומה בט"ו פרקים):
And that is that He commanded us to process the red heifer, so that its ashes be ready for one who needs it for purification from the impurity of a corpse - as He said, "and it shall be for the congregation of the Children of Israel" (Numbers 19:9). And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Parah. (See Parashat Chukat; Mishneh Torah, Red Heifer 1-15.)
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
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 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 4Q276-277 (4QTohorot) The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic elaboration
- 11QTemple (11Q19) 49-50 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Numbers Rabbah 19:1-8 expanded it homiletically
- Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 4 (Piska Parah) expanded it homiletically
- Tanḥuma Ḥuqqat 8 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.262-272 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.79-81 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Hebrews 9:13-14 read it spiritually a fortiori argument: ashes of heifer sanctify flesh, blood of Christ purifies conscience
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 8.1-7 read it allegorically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:67-71 (Sūrat al-Baqarah, 'the Cow') The catalog describes this reception as: 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.
- hittite laws use of ritual remnants/residue for purification and the danger of mishandling purification materials Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§44b Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
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.