You shall bring the first of the first fruits of your ground into the house of Yahweh your God. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
To bring the first fruits (bikkurim) of the seven species to the Temple
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להוציא הבכורים ולהביאם למקדש. והוא אמרו יתברך ראשית בכורי אדמתך תביא בית ה' אלהיך. ומבואר שהמצוה הזאת אינה נוהגת אלא בפני הבית ולא יבאו אלא מפירות ארץ ישראל וסוריא ועבר הירדן ומשבעת המינין. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת בכורים ושם התבאר שהבכורים נכסי כהן. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות בכורים פ"ב):
That is that He commanded us to extract the first-fruits and bring them to the Temple. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "The choice first-fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the Lord, your God" (Exodus 23:19). And it is explained that this commandment is only practiced in the presence of the Temple and only comes from fruits of the Land of Israel, Syria and Transjordan, and from the [designated] seven species. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Bikkurim. And there it is explained that the first-fruits are the property of the priest. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, First Fruits and other Gifts to Priests Outside the Sanctuary 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.
- 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 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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) cols. 18-23 The catalog describes this reception as: expansion of the firstfruit festival sequence (festival calendar, not the basket procession)
- 4QMMT B 62-64 The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic stringency (referent to bikkurim NOT established; reading uncertain — included only tentatively)
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 1:4 The catalog describes this reception as: homiletic expansion (reshit wordplay, loosely linked to bikkurim)
- Leviticus Rabbah 30:6 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.132-144 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.183-185 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized (festival firstfruit offerings)
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.241 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Romans 11:16 read it allegorically Paul's 'if the firstfruit is holy, so is the lump' deploys firstfruits imagery metaphorically for Israel's election
- 1 Corinthians 15:20 read it spiritually Christ as aparchē (firstfruits) of those who have died
- James 1:18 read it spiritually
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 temple offering lists document first-quality agricultural produce presented to deities as institutional dues in West Semitic cult practice closely analogous to the Israelite context, without the historical-confessional dimension Deuteronomy 26:1-11 introduces Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.40 and ritual offering lists (Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL Writings from the Ancient World, 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.