“ ‘These you may eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, that you may eat.
To examine the signs in fish to determine which are permitted
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֶת־זֶה תֹּאכְלוּ מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר בַּמָּיִם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ סְנַפִּיר וְקַשְׂקֶשֶׂת בַּמַּיִם בַּיַּמִּים וּבַנְּחָלִים אֹתָם תֹּאכֵלוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לבדוק בסימני חגבים גם כן, והן כתובין בתורה כל אשר לו כרעים ממעל לרגליו, וענין זאת המצוה הוא כמו שבארנו במצוה שלפניה, והכתוב שבה הוא אמרו את אלה מהם תאכלו את הארבה. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת חולין. (ויהי ביום השמיני, קדושה הלכות מאכלות אסורות פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to check for the signs of locusts as well. And [the signs] are written in the Torah - "all [...] that have, above their feet, jointed legs" (Leviticus 11:21). And the content of this commandment is like that which we explained in the commandment before this; and the verse about it is His saying, "Of these you may eat the following - locusts" (Leviticus 11:22). And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Chullin. (See Parashat Shemini; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 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.
- 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 Binding
- Conservative As the catalog records it: binding (normative but variably observed)
- 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.110-112 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.259 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 7:19 treated it as abrogated Markan redactional gloss declaring all foods clean; arises in a hand-washing/defilement context but is read as a broader rejection of dietary distinctions, only indirectly applicable to the fish criteria
- Acts 10:11-15 treated it as abrogated Peter's vision of unclean creatures lowered in a sheet; concerns clean/unclean animals broadly and is applied to dietary distinctions only indirectly, with no fish-specific abrogation
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 10.5 read it allegorically
- Novatian, De Cibis Judaicis 3 read it allegorically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:96 set it in contrast
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.