“Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘You shall eat no fat, of bull, or sheep, or goat.
Not to eat certain fats (chelev) of clean animals
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כָּל־חֵלֶב שׁוֹר וְכֶשֶׂב וָעֵז לֹא תֹאכֵלוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מאכול חלב בהמה טהורה. והוא אמרו כל חלב שור וכשב ועז לא תאכלו. וכבר נכפלה האזהרה בו וגזר בו הכרת בבאור אם היה מזיד ואם היה שוגג חייב קרבן חטאת קבועה. וכבר התבאר משפטי מצוה זו בפרק קמא מחולין. (צו את אהרן, הלכות מאכלות אסורות פ"ו):
He prohibited us from eating the forbidden fat (chelev) of a pure beast. And that is His saying, "All chelev of an ox or a sheep or a goat you shall not eat" (Leviticus 7:23). And the prohibition about it has already been repeated; and in its explanation (Leviticus 7:25), He decreed that it is [punished] with excision if one was volitional. But if he was inadvertent, he is liable for a fixed sin-offering. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the first chapter of Chullin. (See Parashat Tzav; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 6.)
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
- Karet — being 'cut off'
Ritual remedy
- A sin-offering (ḥatat)
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 1.232-238 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.260 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 6:146 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.
- gilgamesh epic after the flood, Utnapishtim offers sacrifice and the gods 'gathered like flies' around the pleasing aroma of the offering, expressing the Mesopotamian assumption that the savor of the burned sacrifice is prized by the gods Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet XI, lines 155-161 George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003)
- atrahasis epic Atrahasis offers sacrifice after the flood and the gods swarm around it, depicting the burned offering as divine food; the Israelite chelev prohibition draws a sharper divine/human boundary by reserving fat for the altar while forbidding human consumption of it Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet III, col. v (flood sacrifice) 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 (malkot) for consuming specific internal animal fats designated as God's altar portion; post-Enlightenment norms treat corporal punishment as an incompatible method.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the imposition of thirty-nine lashes for consuming chelev (hard suet reserved for the altar) falls within the class of physical punishments that international human-rights law designates as degrading treatment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality doctrine holds that punishment must be commensurate with the harm caused; corporal punishment for eating a specific category of animal fat exceeds any proportionate response recognized under contemporary penal theory.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that lashes may only be imposed by a Sanhedrin of twenty-three judges, an institution that has not functioned since the destruction of the Second Temple; the malkot sanction is therefore de jure but not de facto enforceable.