You must not eat bread, or roasted grain, or fresh grain, until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God. This is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
Not to eat roasted grain from new produce before the omer
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֶחֶם וְקָלִי וְכַרְמֶל לֹא תֹאכְלוּ עַד־עֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מאכול קלי מתבואה חדשה קודם כלות ששה עשר בניסן. והוא אמרו וקלי לא תאכלו. ומי שאכל ממנו כזית לוקה. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from eating parched grain made from the new grain before the end of the sixteenth day of Nissan. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "parched grain [...] you shall not eat" (Leviticus 23:14). And one who eats a kazayit of it is lashed. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 7.)
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 As the catalog records it: disputed diaspora
- 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 2.162-175 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.250-251 affirmed it
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.
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic ritual texts attest firstfruits dedications at harvest festivals without a corresponding prohibition on pre-offering grain consumption by the general population; the Israelite triple prohibition covering all forms of new grain — including the most common everyday preparation (roasted grain) — imposes a universal temporal boundary that the Ugaritic system does not parallel Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.41 / 1.87 (Ugaritic sacrificial-offering calendar) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
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 eating roasted grain from the new harvest before the omer offering; 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 eating parched grain before a priestly harvest ceremony 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 the timing of consuming roasted grain — an everyday staple food — 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.