Only be sure that you don’t eat the blood; for the blood is the life. You shall not eat the life with the meat.
Not to eat any limb torn from a living animal
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
רַק חֲזַק לְבִלְתִּי אֲכֹל הַדָּם כִּי הַדָּם הוּא הַנָּפֶשׁ וְלֹא־תֹאכַל הַנֶּפֶשׁ עִם־הַבָּשָׂר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מאכול אבר מן החי, והוא שמחתך ממנו אבר והוא חי ואכל אותו האבר כברייתו כזית אפילו היה בה מן הבשר כל שהוא. ומי שאכלו לוקה והאזהרה מזה אמרו לא תאכל הנפש עם הבשר, ולשון ספרי הנפש עם הבשר זה אבר מן החי, וכן נתבאר בגמרא מחולין (שם) ושם נאמר אכל אבר מן החי ובשר מן החי חייב שתים, ובאור זה שהם שני לאוין הלאו אחד לא תאכל הנפש שהוא איסור האבר והלאו השני ובשר בשדה טרפה שהוא איסור בשר החי גם כן כמו שבארנו. וכבר נכפלה האזהרה בענין בלשון אחר באמרו לנח באבר מן החי אך בשר בנפשו דמו לא תאכלו. (ראה אנכי, קדושה הלכות מאכלות אסורות פ"ה):
He prohibited us from eating a limb from a living animal. And that is that one cuts a limb from it while it is alive and eats a kazayit of that limb in its natural (complete) form, even if there was only the smallest amount of meat to it. And one who eats it is lashed. And the prohibition about it is His saying, "and you must not eat the life with the meat" (Deuteronomy 12:23). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 76:5) is, "'The life with the meat' - that is a limb from a living animal." And likewise is it explained in the Gemara, Chullin (Chullin 102b). And there it is said, "[If] one ate a limb from a living animal and meat from a living animal, he is liable twice." And the explanation of this is that they are two [different] prohibitions. One prohibition is "you must not eat the life," - which is the prohibition of the limb; and the second prohibition is "and you must not eat meat that was torn in the field," which is also the prohibition of meat from a living animal, as we explained (in the previous commandment). And the prohibition about this content was already repeated with different language when He said to Noah about a limb from a living animal, "Yet flesh with its lifeblood, you shall not eat" (Genesis 9:4). (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 5.)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding via blood clause (rests on plain sense reading of the blood/life clause rather than the rabbinic ever min ha chai derivation)
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
- Genesis Rabbah 34:13 expanded it homiletically
The New Testament
- Acts 15:20 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel affirmed Apostolic decree requires gentiles to abstain from 'what is strangled' (pniktou) and from blood; on a common scholarly reading this reflects a Noahide-style application of the blood prohibition to non-Jews, though the linkage to ever min ha-chai specifically is interpretive rather than explicit.
- Acts 15:29 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel affirmed Reiteration of the decree.
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:3 carried a parallel
- Q 6:145 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- atrahasis epic The post-flood divine permission to use animals for human sustenance in Atrahasis (and the Gilgamesh parallel) contains no restriction on consuming blood or flesh while the animal still lives; Genesis 9:3-4 grants the same post-flood meat permission but adds the blood/living-flesh restriction, marking a polemical divergence from the Mesopotamian flood tradition Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet III (flood denouement; cf. Lambert-Millard pp. 98-105) Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969)
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 consuming a limb severed from a living animal; while the underlying prohibition against cruelty is widely shared, corporal punishment as the enforcement mechanism is incompatible with modern norms 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; thirty-nine lashes for a dietary act — even one involving animal cruelty — constitutes a degrading physical sanction.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern proportionality doctrine distinguishes harm to persons from other wrongs; while ever min ha-chai involves animal welfare concerns, corporal punishment for the dietary act of consumption exceeds proportionate secular enforcement.
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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 period; the lash penalty is de jure in force but de facto unenforceable.