“ ‘You shall detest these among the birds; they shall not be eaten because they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture,
Not to eat any unclean bird
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאֶת־אֵלֶּה תְּשַׁקְּצוּ מִן־הָעוֹף לֹא יֵאָכְלוּ שֶׁקֶץ הֵם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מלאכול עוף טמא. והוא אמרו יתעלה במינים ההם ואת אלה תשקצו מן העוף לא יאכל וגו', ומי שאכל מבשרם כזית לוקה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו עם השתים שלפניה בשלישי מחולין. (שם, שם פ"ב):
He prohibited us from eating impure birds. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying about those species, "These you shall consider repulsive from among the birds; they may not be eaten, etc." (Leviticus 11:13). And one who eats a kazayit of their meat is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment - along with the two before it - have already been explained in the third [chapter] of Chullin. (See Parashat Shemini; 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 prohibition
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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 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
- Leviticus Rabbah 13:5 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.116-118 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.259 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 7:19 treated it as abrogated Markan editorial gloss ('thus he declared all foods clean'); its scope — whether it abrogates the specific Levitical animal/bird lists or addresses handwashing and defilement-by-ingestion — is debated in scholarship
- Acts 10:11-15 treated it as abrogated Peter's vision of unclean creatures, including birds of the air, declared clean
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 10:1-5 read it allegorically
- Novatian, De Cibis Iudaicis 3 read it spiritually
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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment imposes flogging for consuming any bird on the prohibited species list; corporal punishment as a mechanism for enforcing dietary choice is incompatible with modern norms of bodily autonomy and personal liberty.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 bars cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the imposition of thirty-nine lashes for eating a prohibited bird species constitutes degrading physical punishment under international human-rights law.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Secular proportionality doctrine requires a rational relationship between sanction and harm; corporal punishment for consuming a raptor or scavenging bird bears no defensible proportion to any identifiable secular harm.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Lash jurisdiction rested with the Sanhedrin, which ceased to function with the destruction of the Second Temple; the malkot sanction is formally binding but has been practically inoperative since that time.