Yet you may eat these: of all winged creeping things that go on all fours, which have long, jointed legs for hopping on the earth.
To examine the signs in locusts to determine which species are permitted
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַךְ אֶת־זֶה תֹּאכְלוּ מִכֹּל שֶׁרֶץ הָעוֹף הַהֹלֵךְ עַל־אַרְבַּע אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ כְרָעַיִם מִמַּעַל לְרַגְלָיו לְנַתֵּר בָּהֵן עַל־הָאָרֶץ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לבדוק בסימני העוף שיהיו קצת מינין ממנו מותרין, וסימני העוף לא נאמרו מן התורה אבל הגיע בחקירה כשאנחנו חפשנו המינין שנכתב איסורן אשר מצאנו בהם סגולות יכללו אותם והם סימני עוף טמא, והיותנו גם כן בעופות דנין זה טמא וזה טהור וזה מצות עשה. ולשון ספרי כל צפור טהורה תאכלו זו מצות עשה. הנה נתבאר מה שרמזנו אליו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בחולין. (שם שם פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to check for the signs of birds, such that only some of them are permissible. And the signs of the birds are not stated in the Torah. They rather come from an investigation of our finding the birds that are written to be forbidden, and our [then finding] phenomena that they have in common - and these are the signs of an impure bird. And since also regarding birds are we involved with the issue of which is impure and which is pure, that [involvement] is a positive commandment. And the language of the Sifrei is, "'You may eat any clean bird' (Deuteronomy 14:11) - that is a positive commandment." Behold what we have hinted was made clear. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chullin. (See Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 2.)
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.
- Recorded as practiced today
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: conditional
- Conservative As the catalog records it: conditional
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: conditional
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.
The New Testament
- Matthew 3:4 The catalog describes this reception as: presupposed John the Baptist's diet of locusts (akrides) is often read as reflecting continued observance of the Levitical permission in Second Temple Judea, though the text itself makes no explicit halakhic claim
- Mark 1:6 The catalog describes this reception as: presupposed Parallel account of locust consumption; the observance reading is an interpretive inference rather than an explicit textual affirmation
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.