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 fallen grapes of the vineyard
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּפֶרֶט כַּרְמְךָ לֹא תְלַקֵּט לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר שלא לקבץ הגרעינים שיפלו בכרם בשעת בצירה אבל יעזבם לעניים. והוא אמרו ופרט כרמך לא תלקט וגו', וזה גם כן ניתק לעשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת פאה. (שם, שם):
He prohibited - not to gather the single grapes that fall in the vineyard at the time of the harvest. Rather one must leave them for the poor. And that is His saying, "neither shall you gather the single grapes of your vineyard, etc." (Leviticus 19:10). 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, 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 4.176-178 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.231-234 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 6:141 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.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes corporal punishment for picking up individual grapes that have fallen from one's own vineyard during harvest — a de minimis act for which no modern legal system would impose any criminal sanction, let alone lashing.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; judicial flogging for collecting fallen individual grapes satisfies the threshold for inhuman or degrading treatment under international human-rights law.
-
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 and the loss of ordained judicial authority; the malkot sanction for collecting peret is de jure but has been inoperative for nearly two millennia.