“Moreover you shall speak to the Levites, and tell them, ‘When you take of the children of Israel the tithe which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then you shall offer up a wave offering of it for Yahweh, a tithe of the tithe.
The Levites shall set apart a tenth of their tithe for the priests (terumat maaser)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וַהֲרֵמֹתֶם מִמֶּנּוּ תְּרוּמַת יְהוָה מַעֲשֵׂר מִן־הַמַּעֲשֵׂר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה ללוים להוציא מעשר מן המעשר שיקחו מישראל ויתנוהו לכהנים, והוא אמרו ואל הלוים תדבר ואמרת אליהם כי תקחו מאת בני ישראל את המעשר וגו'. ובאר הכתוב שזה המעשר נקרא תרומת מעשר וינתן לכהן. ובאר הכתוב שזה המעשר ילקח אם מן הטוב שבו ואם מן היפה שבו באמרו מכל חלבו שהם חוטאים אם לא יוציאוהו מן הטוב. והוא אמרו יתברך ולא תשאו עליו חטא בהרימכם את חלבו ממנו, וזה הלאו שלילת החיוב הוא אמרו לא תשאו עליו חטא כשיוציאוהו מן היפה ויורה זה בשיוציאוהו מן הרע יחטאו, וזה ענינו בענין לאו הבא מכלל עשה שאינו נמנה עם הלאוין כלומר אחר שהוא צוה להוציאו מן היפה הורה שלא יוציאוהו מן הרע. ולשון ספרי מנין אתה אומר שאם הוציאו אותו שלא מן היפה שהם בנשיאת עון תלמוד לומר ולא תשאו עליו חטא. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת תרומות ומעשרות ובמקומות מדמאי. (ויקח קרח, הלכות מעשר פ"א):
That is that He commanded the Levites to extract a tithe from the tithe that they take from Israel, and give it to the priests. And that is His saying, "Speak to the Levites and say to them, 'When you receive the tithes from the Children of Israel, etc.'" (Numbers 18:26) And Scripture explains that this is called the priestly tithe from the tithe (terumat maaser) and is given to a priest. And Scripture [also] explains that this tithe is taken either from the goodly part of it or from the superior part of it, by its saying, "from any of its best portion (chelbo)" (Leviticus 18:29). And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "And you shall bear no sin by reason of it, when you have set aside from it, the best of it" (Leviticus 18:32). And this negative commandment is the negation of the obligation that He said, "And you shall bear no sin" when they extract it from the fine part. So it indicates that when they extract it from the inferior part, they sin. And its content is that of a negative commandment derived from a positive commandment, which is not counted with the negative commandments. This means to say that since He commanded to extract from the superior part, He indicated that they should not extract it from the inferior part. And the language of the Sifrei is, "From where [do we know to] say that if they extracted it not from the superior part that they have transgressed? [Hence] we learn to say, 'And you shall bear no sin by reason of it.'" And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Terumot, Maaserot and in some places in Demai. (See Parashat Korach; Mishneh Torah, Tithes 1.)
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 ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- 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
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, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) LX The catalog describes this reception as: reworked/harmonized
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.156-157 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.68-69 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.