“This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
To treat the corpse of a human being as ritually defiling
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
זֹאת הַתּוֹרָה אָדָם כִּי־יָמוּת בְּאֹהֶל כָּל־הַבָּא אֶל־הָאֹהֶל וְכָל־אֲשֶׁר בָּאֹהֶל יִטְמָא שִׁבְעַת יָמִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להיותנו דנין בטומאת מת, ומצוה זו כוללת כל משפטי טומאת מת. (זאת חקת התורה, טהרה הלכות טומאת מת בכ"ה פרקים):
That is that He commanded us to administer [the laws of] the impurity of a corpse. And this commandment includes all of the regulations of the impurity of a corpse. (See Parashat Chukat; Mishneh Torah, Defilement by a Corpse 1-25.)
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding in principle
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) cols 48-51 read it more strictly
- 4Q274 (Tohorot A) read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 4 (Parah) expanded it homiletically
- Numbers Rabbah 19:1-8 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.113 read it allegorically
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.205-207 rationalized it
Josephus
- Against Apion 2.198 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Luke 10:31-32 reinterpreted it priest and Levite avoid the wounded man, plausibly to avoid corpse impurity; the parable subordinates purity to mercy
- Matthew 23:27 read it allegorically whitewashed tombs hiding corpse-uncleanness used as a moral metaphor for hypocrisy
- Hebrews 9:13-14 read it spiritually red-heifer ashes for corpse defilement contrasted with the cleansing of conscience through Christ's blood
The Church Fathers
- Barnabas, Epistle of Barnabas 8 (red-heifer purification associated with corpse impurity) The catalog describes this reception as: typological
- Origen, Homiliae in Numeros, Hom. on Num 19 read it allegorically
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.
- Zoroastrian/Avestan The most elaborate parallel system for corpse contamination: the nasu (corpse-demon) is treated as the most potent pollution source, capable of spreading through gaze alone — a more extreme analogue to the Israelite tent-impurity principle; comparison is typological, not genetic, and the Vidēvdād material post-dates P. Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Vidēvdād (Vendidad), corpse-pollution (nasu) legislation Darmesteter, *The Zend-Avesta, Part I: The Vendîdâd* (SBE 4, Oxford, 1880); cf. Choksy, *Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism* (Texas, 1989). Iranian tradition outside strict ANE corpus vocabulary; retained as typological comparandum following Klawans and Milgrom.
- mesopotamian incantation series Mesopotamian sources frame the danger of death-contact as personal ghost (eṭemmu) affliction requiring exorcistic or incantatory treatment, contrasting with the Priestly model in which corpse-contamination is an impersonal, substance-based force requiring immersion and waiting rather than ritual expulsion. Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast namburbi rites (cf. Maul, Zukunftsbewältigung); zikurudû / eṭemmu-propitiation incantations; no single canonical series Maul, *Zukunftsbewältigung: Eine Untersuchung altorientalischen Denkens anhand der babylonisch-assyrischen Löserituale (Namburbi)* (BaF 18, 1994); Scurlock, *Magico-Medical Means of Treating Ghost-Induced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia* (Brill, 2006)
- Greek Greek religion treated contact with the dead as miasma-polluting, particularly regarding sanctuary access, but without the graduated multi-day contamination chains and tent-impurity mechanism of the Levitical system. Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Death-pollution (miasma) regulations in Greek cathartic law (e.g., Cyrene cathartic law, SEG 9.72; Cos sacred laws) Sokolowski, *Lois sacrées des cités grecques* (LSCG, 1969), no. 115 (Cyrene cathartic law = SEG 9.72); Parker, *Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion* (Oxford, 1983). Greek material outside strict ANE corpus vocabulary; retained as comparative material standard in critical-scholarship treatments of P impurity (Klawans, Lemos, Feder).
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.