“ ‘If any man has an emission of semen, then he shall bathe all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the evening.
A man who has a seminal emission shall immerse and be impure until evening
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִישׁ כִּי־תֵצֵא מִמֶּנּוּ שִׁכְבַת־זָרַע וְרָחַץ בַּמַּיִם אֶת־כָּל־בְּשָׂרוֹ וְטָמֵא עַד־הָעָרֶב
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
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 As the catalog records it: non binding residual custom
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding disputed
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)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) 45:7-12 The catalog describes this reception as: stringent reinterpretation — bars those with nocturnal emission from Temple access (45:7 10) and excludes those who had sexual intercourse from the entire holy city for three days (45:11 12), intensifying the biblical until evening rule
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.118-119 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized (genital purity framework)
Josephus
- Against Apion 2.198 The catalog describes this reception as: related
- Antiquities 3.262-264 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:6 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel (janaba purification by ghusl prior to prayer)
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.