When you come into your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the ears with your hand; but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor’s standing grain.
A hired worker may eat from the produce he is harvesting while working
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי תָבֹא בְּכֶרֶם רֵעֶךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ עֲנָבִים כְּנַפְשְׁךָ שָׂבְעֶךָ וְאֶל־כֶּלְיְךָ לֹא תִתֵּן
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להיות השכיר אוכל מהדבר שיעבוד בו בעת עבודתו כשיהיה הדבר מחובר לקרקע. והוא אמרו יתעלה כי תבא בכרם כי תבא בקמת. וכבר התבאר בגמרא מציעא (דף פ"ז) כי משני אלו הכתובים למדנו שהאדם אוכל במחובר לקרקע בשעת מלאכה ושלא יספיק לנו הכתוב האחד מבלתי חבירו עמו, כמו שבארנו במה שקדם אצלנו באמרנו עד שיאמר ושני כתובים ואם לאו לא שמענו אם כן מצות עשה זאת עלה ענינה משני כתובים כלומר היתר אכילה לשכיר מן המחובר. ובבאור אמרו (שם) אלו אוכלין מן התורה וכו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ז ממציעא. (שם שם פי"ב):
That is that He commanded us that an employee eat from the thing he is working upon, at the time of his work - when the thing is attached to the ground. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "When you enter the vineyard of [...] When you enter the standing grainstalks of" (Deuteronomy 22:25-26). And it has already been explained in the Gemara, Metzia (Bava Metzia 87b) that we learn from these two verses that a man may eat while at work from what is attached to the ground; and that one verse would not suffice without its fellow [being together] with it. [This is] as we explained earlier here (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandments, 140), when they said, "Until both verses are stated. And, if not, we would not have understood [it]." Hence the content of this positive commandment - meaning the employee's eating from that which is connected - arose from two verses. And in the explanation (Bava Metzia 87a), they said, "These may eat, from the Torah, etc." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 7 of [Bava] Metzia (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Hiring 12).
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Josephus
- Ant. 4.234-235 affirmed it Josephus paraphrases the Deuteronomic allowance, permitting those passing through or working a field/vineyard to eat of the produce while restricting them from carrying any away.
The New Testament
- Matthew 12:1-2 affirmed it Disciples pluck grain by hand; the narrative presupposes the eating right of Deut 23:26 while raising a separate Sabbath-restriction dispute. Parallel at Mark 2:23, Luke 6:1.
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.