Of the first of your dough you shall offer up a cake for a wave offering. As the wave offering of the threshing floor, so you shall heave it.
To set apart challah (a portion of dough) for the priest
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
רֵאשִׁית עֲרִסֹתֵכֶם חַלָּה תָּרִימוּ תְרוּמָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שנפריש חלה מעריסותינו וליתנה לכהן, והוא אמרו יתעלה ויתברך שמו ראשית עריסותיכם חלה תרימו תרומה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת חלה ובמסכת תמורה. ואינה חובה מן התורה אלא בארץ ישראל לבד. (שלח לך, זרעים הלכות בכורים פ"ה):
That is that He commanded us to separate the loaf (challah)-tithe from our dough and to give it to the priest. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "[From] the first portion of your doughs, you shall separate a loaf as a tithe." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Challah and in Tractate Terumah. But by the law of the Torah, it is only obligatory in the Land of Israel alone. (See Parashat Shelach; Mishneh Torah, First Fruits and other Gifts to Priests Outside the Sanctuary 5.)
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.
- 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
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
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- 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
- Genesis Rabbah 17:8 expanded it homiletically
- Tanchuma Noach 1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.131-144 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.71 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Romans 11:16 read it allegorically Paul invokes the dough first-fruits (aparchē tou phyramatos) to argue holiness of the part sanctifies the whole
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.