“ ‘You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. “ ‘The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning.
Not to withhold the wages of a hired worker past the due time
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תָלִין פְּעֻלַּת שָׂכִיר אִתְּךָ עַד־בֹּקֶר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו שלא לרמות השכיר ושלא לאחר שכרו אצלנו. והוא אמרו לא תלין פעולת שכיר, וזה שאם היה שכיר יום הוא גובה כל הלילה באמרו עד בקר, ואם היה שכיר לילה הנה זמן פריעתו כל הלילה וכל היום ולא תבא השמש קודם שיפרעהו, והוא אמרו ביומו תתן שכרו וגו'. ולשון המשנה (מציעא ק"י:) שכיר יום גובה כל הלילה ושכיר לילה גובה כל היום, ואין זה שתי מצות אמנם היא מצוה אחת ובאו בה שני לאוין כדי להשלים דין המצוה, וזה שאנחנו באלו שתי הלאוין ידענו זמן הפרעון מתי הוא. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בט' ממציעא. (קדושים, הלכות שכירות פי"א):
He prohibited us - not to oppress the employee and not to delay his wage with us. And that is His saying, "there shall not abide with you the wages of a worker" (Leviticus 19:13). And that is that if he was a day-worker, he collects the whole night, from His saying, "until morning." And if he was a night-worker - behold the time of his payment is the whole night and the whole day, and the sun may not set before one pays him. And that is His saying, "You must pay him his wage on the same day, etc." (Deuteronomy 24:15). And the language of the Mishnah (Bava Metzia 110b) is, "A day-worker is to collect [his wage] during any of the night, and a night-worker is to collect during any of the day." And these are not two commandments. Rather it is one commandment, but two negative statements have appeared about it in order to fill out the law of the commandment. And that is that with these two negative statements, we know when is the time of payment. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the ninth [chapter] of [Bava] Metzia. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Hiring 11.)
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
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 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 4.195 rationalized it
- De Virtutibus 88 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.288 affirmed it
The New Testament
- James 5:4 affirmed it Withheld wages of laborers 'cry out'; echoes Lev 19:13 / Deut 24:14-15 wage-theft tradition
- Matthew 20:8 carried a parallel Parable of the vineyard: laborers paid 'when evening came', a narrative motif consonant with the same-day wage-payment tradition rather than a stated legal norm
The Qur'an and hadith
- Sunan Ibn Majah 2443 carried a parallel
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 fixed annual wages for agricultural and ox-driver hires Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§257-258 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna stipulated hire rates for laborers and harvesters; fixes rates rather than payment-timing Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§7-11 Roth, Law Collections 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Mishnah Makkot 3 and Maimonides (Hilkhot Sekhirut 11:3) prescribe thirty-nine lashes for withholding a worker's wages past the due time; modern penal proportionality precludes corporal punishment for a wage-dispute default that causes economic harm but no physical harm.
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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 failing to pay wages on time falls within the class of punishments consistently classified as degrading by international human-rights bodies.
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abrogated_in_practice
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
The malkot sanction has not been administered since the dissolution of the Sanhedrin; the de jure conflict with modern penal norms is not enforced in practice.