You shall not glean your vineyard, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the foreigner. I am Yahweh your God.
Not to gather the defective grape clusters
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכַרְמְךָ לֹא תְעוֹלֵל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מבצור עוללות הכרם בשעת בצירתו. והוא אמרו וכרמך לא תעולל, אבל יניח העוללות לעניים. ודין זה (*עי' הקדמת הרמב"ן לפרטי המצות.) בשאר האילנות הדומים לכרם כי האזהרה באמרו לא תחבוט זיתך וגו' והוא שלא יקח השכחה מן הזית תדע ששאר אילנות בשכחה, וזה גם כן ניתק לעשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת פאה. (קדושים, שם):
He prohibited us from harvesting the ollalot (incomplete clusters) of the vineyard at the time of the harvest. And that is His saying, "You shall not pick your vineyard bare" (Leviticus 19:10). Rather one must leave them for the poor. But this law is not with other trees (see the Ramban in his Introduction to the Positive Commandments - Hasagot HaRamban on Sefer HaMitzvot, On the counting of Mitzvot), even ones similar to the vineyard. For [their] prohibition is with His saying, "When you beat your olive tree, etc." (Deuteronomy 24:20) - and that is that you do not take what is forgotten of the olives. Know [then] that other trees are [only] forbidden concerning [what is] forgotten. And this too is rectified by a positive commandment; and the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Peah. (See Parashat Kedoshim; 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
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding by peshat
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 Virtutibus 91-94 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.
- hittite laws Hittite Laws address damage to and trespass on vineyards and orchards and presuppose that vineyard produce belongs to the owner or cultivator with no provision for any poor entitlement to defective clusters, illustrating the broader ANE viticulture norm that the negative olelot prohibition inverts Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§101-105 (fire and damage to vineyards and orchards) Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (Brill, 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 collecting commercially inferior grape clusters from one's own vineyard — a harvest welfare infraction that in any modern legal system would be subject at most to civil remedy. Lashing for gathering defective produce is categorically 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 collecting defective grape clusters from one's own vineyard meets the threshold for inhuman or degrading treatment under international human-rights standards.
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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 malkot sanction for gathering olelot is de jure but inoperative since the loss of ordained judicial authority.