“ ‘When you come into the land, and have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden. For three years it shall be forbidden to you. It shall not be eaten.
Not to eat the fruit of a tree during its first three years (orlah)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים יִהְיֶה לָכֶם עֲרֵלִים לֹא יֵאָכֵל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מאכול ערלה. והוא אמרו יתעלה יהיו לכם ערלים לא יאכל. ומי שאכל ממנו כזית לוקה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת ערלה, ואיסור אכילת ערלה בחוץ לארץ הלכה למשה מסיני, אמנם לשון התורה בארץ ישראל לבד. (קדושים, שם):
He prohibited us from eating orlah (fruit of trees during their first three years). And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "it shall be closed off to you, it shall not be eaten" (Leviticus 19:23). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Orlah. And the prohibition of orlah outside of the Land [of Israel] is a law of Moshe from Sinai; however the language of the Torah is only [about] the Land of Israel. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Foods 10.)
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
- Binding in the land of Israel
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 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 Virtutibus 156-159 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.226-227 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) for eating fruit from a tree during its first three years; 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 eating fruit from a young tree 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 the timing of consuming orchard fruit — a calendrically defined restriction tied to a tree's age — 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.