You shall surely let the hen go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days.
To send away the mother bird before taking the young or the eggs
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת־הָאֵם וְאֶת־הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח־לָךְ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשלוח הקן. והוא אמרו יתעלה שלח תשלח את האם ואת הבנים תקח לך. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפרק בתרא מחולין. (כי תצא, קדושה הלכות שחיטה):
That is that He commanded us to send away [the mother bird from] the nest. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You must surely send away the mother, and the offspring take for yourself," (Leviticus 17:13). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the last chapter of Chullin. (See Parashat Ki Tetzeh; 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 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Devarim Rabbah 6:1 expanded it homiletically
- b. Berakhot 33b The catalog describes this reception as: debated
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 132-144 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.290 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.