You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself. You may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Not to eat the flesh of an animal that died of natural causes (neveilah)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תֹאכְלוּ כָל־נְבֵלָה לַגֵּר אֲשֶׁר־בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ תִּתְּנֶנָּה וַאֲכָלָהּ אוֹ מָכֹר לְנָכְרִי כִּי עַם קָדוֹשׁ אַתָּה לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מאכול המתה, והוא אמרו לא תאכל כל נבלה ומי שאכל ממנה כזית לוקה. (ראה אנכי, קדושה הלכות מאכלות אסורות פ"ד):
He prohibited us from eating a dead [animal]. And that is His saying, "Do not eat any carcass" (Deuteronomy 14:21). And one who eats a kazayit of it is lashed. (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 4.)
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 The catalog describes this reception as: related stringency
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.119-122 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.259-260 affirmed it Addresses carcass impurity within the broader purity cluster rather than the dietary prohibition of neveilah-consumption specifically
The New Testament
- Acts 15:20, 29 The catalog describes this reception as: partially applied The apostolic decree's prohibition of 'what is strangled' (pniktón) and blood for Gentile believers parallels the neveilah/blood concern, applying a reduced version to non-Jews
The Church Fathers
- Novatian, De Cibis Iudaicis 3-5 The catalog describes this reception as: allegorized/superseded
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:3 carried a parallel
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 prescribes flogging for eating an animal that died without proper ritual slaughter; corporal punishment for a dietary act is incompatible with modern norms of bodily autonomy, even where the underlying food-safety concern may be shared.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; thirty-nine lashes for consuming naturally deceased animal flesh constitutes a degrading physical sanction under international human-rights standards.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Proportionality doctrine requires sanctions commensurate with identifiable harm; flogging for eating an unsaughtered carcass — which may present no greater health risk than properly slaughtered meat — is disproportionate under secular penal theory.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Malkot jurisdiction requires a Sanhedrin of twenty-three judges, an institution that has not functioned since the Second Temple era; the lash penalty is de jure binding but practically unenforceable.