You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless Yahweh your God for the good land which he has given you.
To recite grace after meals when satisfied
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עַל־הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן־לָךְ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לברכו אחר אכילה והוא אמרו ואכלת ושבעת וברכת את ה' אלהיך. ולשון התוספתא ברכת המזון מן התורה שנאמר ואכלת ושבעת וברכת. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במקומות רבים ממסכת ברכות. (והיה עקב, אהבה הלכות ברכות פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to bless Him after eating. And that is His saying, "And you shall eat and be satiated, and bless the Lord, your God" (Deuteronomy 8:10). And the language of the Tosefta (Tosefta Berakhot 6:1) is, "Grace over the meals is [an obligation] from the Torah, as it is stated, 'And you shall eat and be satiated, and bless.'" And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in many places in Tractate Berakhot. (See Parashat Ekev, Mishneh Torah, Blessings 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 flat, unconditional command
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
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding (scriptural blessing affirmed; rabbinic four blessing formula rejected)
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
- b. Berakhot 48b expanded it homiletically
- b. Berakhot 35a expanded it homiletically
The New Testament
- Matthew 14:19 carried a parallel Jesus blesses (εὐλόγησεν) before distributing bread, reflecting the practice of pre-meal blessing rather than the Deuteronomic post-satiation blessing
- 1 Corinthians 10:30-31 reinterpreted it Paul generalizes table thanksgiving ('if I partake with thankfulness... do all to the glory of God')
- 1 Timothy 4:3-5 reinterpreted it food 'sanctified by the word of God and prayer,' a thanksgiving rationale for unrestricted eating
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:172 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel (general injunction to eat good things and give thanks to God; not specifically post satiation grace)
- Sahih al-Bukhari 5458 carried a parallel
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.