If you come across a bird’s nest on the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the hen sitting on the young, or on the eggs, you shall not take the hen with the young.
Not to take the mother bird together with her young
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִקַּח הָאֵם עַל־הַבָּנִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו שלא נקח קן צפור בעת הצידה האם והבנים. והוא אמרו לא תקח האם על הבנים, וזה הלאו ניתק לעשה והוא שלח תשלח את האם ואת הבנים תקח לך, וכל זמן שלא יהיה אפשר לשלח ולקיים עשה שבה כגון שמתה האם קודם שישלחנה לוקה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בסוף חולין. (תצא, קדושה הלכות שחיטה פי"ג):
He prohibited us - that we not take the nest at the time of the snare - the mother and the young. And that is His saying, "you shall not take the mother bird upon the young" (Deuteronomy 22:6). And this negative commandment is rectified by a positive commandment; and that is, "You must surely send away the mother, and you may take the young for yourself" (Deuteronomy 22:7). And anytime it is [no longer] possible to send [it] away and to fulfill the positive commandment in it - such as when the mother died before he sent it away - he is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained at the end of Chullin. (See Parashat Ki Teitzeh; Mishneh Torah, Ritual Slaughter 13.)
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 Contested
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
- m. Berakhot 5:3 The catalog describes this reception as: anti rationalizing
- Deuteronomy Rabbah 6:1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 125-133 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.290-291 affirmed 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes flogging (malkot) — if the positive remedy is not performed — for taking a brooding mother bird together with her young; 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 taking a nesting bird together with her eggs or young 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 a bird-nesting encounter — however morally motivated — exceeds any proportionate response 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.