which ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you! Let them be your protection.
Not to eat or drink wine used in idolatrous libation
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֲשֶׁר חֵלֶב זְבָחֵימוֹ יֹאכֵלוּ יִשְׁתּוּ יֵין נְסִיכָם
Literary form: a command embedded in narrative
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, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not 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
- Sifre Deuteronomy §328 expanded it homiletically
The New Testament
- 1 Corinthians 10:20-21 carried a parallel Paul forbids drinking 'the cup of demons,' articulating an independent early-Christian concern about participation in pagan libation that is thematically parallel to, rather than an affirmation of, the rabbinic yein nesekh halakhah
- Acts 15:29 carried a parallel Apostolic decree's ban on 'food sacrificed to idols' (eidolothyta) addresses the broader idolatrous-offering category through an independent application rather than reinterpreting this specific wine prohibition
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:90-91 carried a parallel A general prohibition of khamr (wine) and maysir as 'abominations of Satan's work,' not specifically a prohibition of idolatrous-libation wine; the parallel is thematic and loose
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 prescribe wine libations (yn) poured to the assembled deities as a standard component of sacrificial liturgy; the Israelite prohibition against consuming wine dedicated to foreign gods contrasts with this practice by marking participation in such libation as a boundary-crossing violation of exclusive loyalty to YHWH Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.41 (RS 1.003) / KTU 1.87 (Ugaritic sacrificial liturgy) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (WAW 10, 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.
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UDHR Article 18–19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment uses corporal punishment to prevent an Israelite from consuming wine used in the ritual practices of other religions; modern freedom-of-conscience norms protect the individual's right to participate in or share in the observances of other traditions, including wine-based communal libations.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 18 protects freedom to manifest religion or belief in practice, including through ritual observances; enforcing with malkot an Israelite's abstention from wine used in foreign libation constrains the freedom to participate in the religious practices of other communities.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes flogging (malkot) for drinking wine that has been used in an idolatrous libation; 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 drinking wine consecrated to a foreign deity 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 drinking wine that has been offered to another god 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.