If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge.
Not to withhold a pledge from its owner when they need it
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִם־אִישׁ עָנִי הוּא לֹא תִשְׁכַּב בַּעֲבֹטוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר ממנוע המשכון מבעליו בעת שהוא צריך אליו אבל נשיב לו כלי יום ביום וכלי לילה בלילה, כמו שבא לשון המשנה (מציעא קי"ג) מחזיר את הכר בלילה ואת המחרישה ביום, והאזהרה בזה לא תשכב בעבוטו. ולשון ספרי לא תשכב ועבוטו עמך אבל החזר לו מה שאי אפשר לו לעמוד בלעדיו מפני עניותו. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו פ"ט ממציעא. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from keeping the collateral item from its owners during the time that he needs it. Rather we must return it to him - a day-item during the day and a night-item during the night - as it appears in the language of the Mishnah (Bava Metzia 113a), "One must return the pillow at night, and the plow during the day." And the prohibition about it is, "you shall not sleep with his pledge" (Deuteronomy 24:12). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 277:2) is, "You shall not lay down with his pledge in your possession." Rather you must return to him what he cannot stand being without on account of his poverty. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 9 of [Bava] Metzia. (See Parashat Ki Teitzeh; Mishneh Torah, Creditor and Debtor 3.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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 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 2.74-78 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.268 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 distraint and pledge-taking for debt; creditor possession of pledged persons/property Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§113-117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws creditor's seizure and disposition of pledged persons held as distraint Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast C+G §§2-3 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.