All winged creeping things are unclean to you. They shall not be eaten.
Not to eat any creeping winged insect
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכֹל שֶׁרֶץ הָעוֹף טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם לֹא יֵאָכֵלוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מלאכול שרץ העוף. והוא אמרו יתעלה במשנה תורה כל שרץ העוף וגו'. ולשון ספרי כל שרץ העוף הוא מצות לא תעשה. ומי שאכל מהם לוקה. (ראה, שם):
He prohibited us from eating winged swarming things. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying in Mishneh Torah (Deuteronomy), "All winged swarming things, etc." (Deuteronomy 14:19). And the language of the Sifrei is, "'All winged swarming things' - that is a negative commandment." And one who eats of them is lashed. (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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.100-118 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.259-260 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 7:19 treated it as abrogated Markan editorial gloss declaring all foods clean; cf. Acts 10:9-16
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 10 read it allegorically
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 prohibited winged insects; corporal punishment enforced for a dietary choice is incompatible with post-Enlightenment conceptions of personal bodily autonomy.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; thirty-nine lashes for eating a prohibited insect species constitutes degrading physical punishment under the standard of the Covenant.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Penal proportionality requires punishment commensurate with harm; corporal punishment for consuming a winged crawling insect exceeds any proportionate secular sanction for conduct that causes no identifiable harm to others.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
The malkot sanction requires a functioning Sanhedrin of twenty-three judges, which has not existed since the Second Temple era; the prohibition's court-imposed penalty is de jure in force but de facto unenforceable.