You shall answer and say before Yahweh your God, “My father was a Syrian ready to perish. He went down into Egypt, and lived there, few in number. There he became a great, mighty, and populous nation.
To recite the declaration over the first fruits brought to the Temple
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעָנִיתָ וְאָמַרְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לספר טובותיו אשר היטיב לנו והצילנו. ומתחיל בענין יעקב אבינו ומסיים בעבודת המצריים וענותם אותנו ולשבחו על כל זה ולבקש ממנו להתמיד הברכה כשיביא הבכורים, והוא אמרו יתעלה וענית ואמרת לפני ה' אלהיך ומה שבא אחר זה מהפרשה כלה, וזאת המצוה כלה נקראת מקרא בכורים. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת בכורים ובפרק ז' מסוטה. ואין הנשים חייבות בה. (והיה כי תבא, זרעים הלכות מעשר שני פי"א):
That is that He commanded us to tell over His kindnesses that He benefited us and saved us - and one begins with the topic of our father, Yaakov, and finishes with the toil of the Egyptians and their afflicting us - to praise Him about all of this; and to request from Him to continue the blessing, at the time that one brings the first-fruits. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And You shall lift your voice and say before the Lord, your God" (Deuteronomy 26:5) - and all that appears after that in this section. And all of this commandment is that which is called the recitation of the first-fruits (mikra bikkurim). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Bikkurim and in the Chapter 7 of Sotah. But women are not obligated in it. (See Parashat Ki Tavo; Mishneh Torah, Second Tithes and Fourth Year's Fruit 11.)
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.
- Requires a standing Temple
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §301 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.215-222 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.241-243 paraphrased 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.
- hittite vassal treaties recitation of the overlord's beneficent acts toward the vassal before stipulations are laid down, paralleling the bikkurim declaration's summary of YHWH's saving acts (descent, oppression, deliverance, land-gift) before the offering is presented Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary Historical prologue sections (e.g., Mursili II–Duppi-Teshub treaty, §§2-4) Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
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.