“ ‘These are they which are unclean to you among the creeping things that creep on the earth: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard,
To observe the impurity laws regarding the eight species of creeping things (sheratzim)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְזֶה לָכֶם הַטָּמֵא בַּשֶּׁרֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵץ עַל־הָאָרֶץ הַחֹלֶד וְהָעַכְבָּר וְהַצָּב לְמִינֵהוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להיות מטמאים בשמנה שרצים, מצוה זו כוללת טומאת שרץ ומשפטיהם. (שמיני, טהרה שאר אבות הטומאה פ"ד):
That is that He commanded us to [administer the laws of impurity] of eight creeping creatures. This commandment includes the impurity of the creeping creature and its regulations. (See Parashat Shemini; Mishneh Torah, Other Sources of Defilement 1.)
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.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- b. Sanhedrin 17a The catalog describes this reception as: dialectical qualification (juridical competence topos, b. Sanhedrin 17a)
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.100-118 The catalog describes this reception as: allegorized (dietary, not contact impurity)
Josephus
- Ant. 3.259-260 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed (general summary of purity/dietary law, not species specific)
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barn. 10 The catalog describes this reception as: allegorized (dietary prohibitions as moral vices, not species specific contact impurity)
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.