“ ‘Whatever man there is of the children of Israel, or of the strangers who live as foreigners among them, who takes in hunting any animal or bird that may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood, and cover it with dust.
To cover the blood of a slaughtered wild animal or bird with earth
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְשָׁפַךְ֙ אֶת־דָּמ֔וֹ וְכִסָּ֖הוּ בֶּעָפָֽר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לכסות דם חיה ועוף אחר שנשחטו. והוא אמרו יתעלה ושפך את דמו וכסהו בעפר. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ו מחולין. (אחרי מות, קדושה הלכות שחיטה):
That is that He commanded us to cover the blood of a [wild] animal or bird after they are slaughtered. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "he shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth" (Leviticus 17:13). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 6 of Chullin. (See Parashat Ahrei Mot; Mishneh Torah, Ritual Slaughter.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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 As the catalog records it: binding (per peshat of Lev 17:13; Karaite observance follows the plain verse)
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
- Vayikra Rabbah 22:10 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.291 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized (general blood theology; covering rite not directly addressed)
Josephus
- Ant. 3.260 The catalog describes this reception as: loosely related (addresses blood prohibition generally rather than the covering rite specifically)
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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.