For I am Yahweh your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any kind of creeping thing that moves on the earth.
Not to eat any creature that creeps upon the ground
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תְטַמְּאוּ אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם בְּכָל־הַשֶּׁרֶץ הָרֹמֵשׂ עַל־הָאָרֶץ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מלאכול שרץ הארץ כתולעים והחפושיות והדומה להם וזהו הנקרא שרץ הארץ. והוא אמרו וכל השרץ השורץ על הארץ וגו'. ומי שאכל לוקה. (שמיני, שם פ"ב):
He prohibited us from eating things that swarm upon the earth, such as worms, beatles and that which is similar to them. And that is what is called, things that swarm of the land. And that is His saying, "All the things that swarm upon the earth, etc." (Leviticus 11:41). And one who eats [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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 12:11-15 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 13:5 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.100-118 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.259-260 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Acts 10:9-16 reinterpreted it Peter's vision of the sheet containing 'all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles (herpeta) and birds' invokes the creeping-thing category and declares it clean; the passage's primary narrative thrust concerns Gentile inclusion (Acts 10:28), and whether it abrogates the dietary laws as such is interpretively contested
- Mark 7:19 treated it as abrogated narrator's gloss 'thus he declared all foods clean'
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 10 read it allegorically
- Novatian, De Cibis Judaicis 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 lashes for consuming any creeping ground creature; corporal punishment for a dietary act is categorically incompatible with post-Enlightenment principles of bodily integrity.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the administration of thirty-nine lashes for eating a prohibited creeping thing constitutes degrading physical treatment under international human-rights norms.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern proportionality doctrine requires sanctions commensurate with the harm caused; flogging for ingesting a ground-crawling creature generates no defensible proportionate relationship between punishment and any identifiable secular harm.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
The malkot sanction requires a Sanhedrin of twenty-three judges, an institution that ceased to function after the destruction of the Second Temple; the penalty is formally binding but has been de facto unenforceable for nearly two millennia.