“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Not to completely harvest the corners of one's field
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תְכַלֶּה פְּאַת שָׂדְךָ לִקְצֹר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר שלא לקצור כל הזרע אבל ישאיר ממנו לעניים בקצה השדה. והוא אמרו לא תכלה פאת שדך. ולאו זה ניתק לעשה שהוא בשעבר וקצר כל הזרע יתן לעניים שעור הפאה מהדבר הנקצר. והוא אמרו לעני ולגר תעזוב אותם כמו שבארנו במצות עשה (ק"ך). והפאה נוהגת גם כן באילן כמו שנוהגת בשדה. ומצוה זו נוהגת בארץ ישראל לבד מן התורה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת המחוברת לזה. (אמור, הלכות מתנות עניים פ"א):
He prohibited - not to harvest all of what is planted. Rather one must leave some at the end of the field for the poor. And that is His saying, "you shall not completely cut the corner of your field" (Leviticus 23:22). And this negative commandment is rectified by a positive commandment: That is that, if he transgressed and cut all of what is planted, he may give the amount of the corner from what is harvested - and that is His saying, "you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger" - as we explained in the Positive Commandments (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandments 120). And [the commandment of] the corner is practiced with trees just like it it is practiced with fields; but this commandment is only practiced in the Land of Israel from [the law of] the Torah. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the tractate that is connected to this (Peah). (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor 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 prohibition
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
- 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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.176-181 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.231-234 affirmed 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.
- code of hammurabi Old Babylonian field laws treat all produce within a contracted field as the cultivator or owner property with no provision forbidding harvest of any portion of one's own field; the negative peah prohibition transforms the gathering of one's own corner into a legal transgression, directly inverting this framework Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§42-65 (field and agricultural produce laws) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- middle assyrian laws Middle Assyrian field provisions likewise presuppose full owner or cultivator entitlement to all produce from worked land with no statutory gleaning rights for the poor, representing the broad ANE property norm that the negative peah prohibition opposes Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet B (field and agricultural provisions) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes corporal punishment for harvesting the corners of one's own field — an act of maximizing one's agricultural yield from one's own land. While the underlying welfare obligation is defensible, corporal punishment for failure to leave produce is entirely disproportionate under modern penal theory.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; judicial flogging for harvesting one's own field corners meets the threshold for inhuman or degrading treatment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that Sanhedrin corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the destruction of the Second Temple; the lash sanction for harvesting field corners is de jure but has not been enforceable since the loss of ordained judicial authority.