Whether it is a cow or ewe, you shall not kill it and its young both in one day.
Not to slaughter an animal and its offspring on the same day
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְשׁוֹר אוֹ־שֶׂה אֹתוֹ וְאֶת־בְּנוֹ לֹא תִשְׁחֲטוּ בְּיוֹם אֶחָד
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו משחוט בהמה ובנה ביום אחד בין בקדשים בין בחולין. והוא אמרו אותו ואת בנו לא תשחטו ביום אחד. ומי שעבר ושחט לוקה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בחמישי מחולין. (אמור, קדושה הלכות שחיטה פי"ב):
He prohibited us from slaughtering an animal and its child on one day. This applies both to sanctified and non-sanctified animals. And that is His saying, "you shall not slaughter it and its young in one day" (Leviticus 22:28). And one who transgressed and slaughtered [them] is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the fifth [chapter] of Chullin. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Ritual Slaughter 12.)
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 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 Virtutibus 134-144 rationalized it
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.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes flogging (malkot) for slaughtering a mother animal and her offspring on the same day; post-Enlightenment norms treat corporal punishment as an incompatible method.
-
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 slaughtering two related animals on the same day falls within the class of physical punishments that international human-rights law designates as degrading treatment.
-
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 a slaughter-scheduling violation — however ethically motivated — exceeds any proportionate response under contemporary penal theory.
-
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.