You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide yourself from them. You shall surely help him to lift them up again.
Not to leave a person struggling with a heavy burden without offering help
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תִרְאֶה אֶת־חֲמוֹר אָחִיךָ אוֹ שׁוֹרוֹ נֹפְלִים בַּדֶּרֶךְ וְהִתְעַלַּמְתָּ מֵהֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מהניח הנבוך במשאו לחוץ בדרך, אבל נעזור אותו ונפרוק ממנו עד שיתקן לשאת אותו ולהגביהו ומגביה עמו משאו אם על גבו אם על בהמתו כמו שהתבאר במשנה תורה, והוא אמרו וחדלת מעזוב לו. ולשון מכילתא וחדלת מעזוב לו עזוב תעזוב מצינו למדין שהוא עובר על עשה ולא תעשה. וכבר בא גם כן לאו נפרד בזה הענין באמרו לא תראה חמור שונאך. ובספרי לא תראה מצות לא תעשה ולהלן הוא אומר כי תראה זו מצות עשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשני ממציעא. (אלה המשפטים, הלכות רוצח פי"ג):
That He prohibited us from forsaking someone forlorn with a load stuck on the road. Rather we must help him, and unload it from him, until it is set for him to carry it; or raise up his load together with him - whether on his back or on his animal - as it is explained in Mishneh Torah (Deuteronomy). And that is His saying, "and would forbear to unload it" (Exodus 23:5). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 23:5:1) is, "'And would forbear to unload it; you shall surely unload it with him' - we have found to learn that he transgresses a positive and a negative commandment." And a separate negative commandment also appears about this content. And that is His saying, "Do not observe your brother’s donkey" (Deuteronomy 22:4). And in the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 225:1): "'Do not observe' - that is a negative commandment. And earlier, it says, 'When you see' - that is a positive commandment." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the second [chapter] of [Bava] Metzia. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Murderer and the Preservation of Life 13.)
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.
Josephus
- Ant. 4.274-276 affirmed it Josephus paraphrases the Deuteronomic humanitarian laws on returning lost property and raising fallen animals, restating the obligation in his own legal-summary idiom rather than citing Deut 22:4 directly
The New Testament
- Luke 10:30-37 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic allusion Good Samaritan parable thematically dramatizes the priest and Levite who 'pass by on the other side,' illustrating the hit'allam avoidance the prohibition targets, though without direct exegetical citation of Deut 22:4
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 obligation to report and return found property Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §45 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna retention liability for holding a stray slave or animal without notifying the authorities Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §50 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes thirty-nine lashes for deliberately ignoring a neighbor's fallen animal or load; modern penal proportionality precludes corporal punishment for a bystander's failure to assist with a property-retrieval task.
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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 the passive act of walking past a neighbor's fallen burden falls within the class of punishments that international human-rights bodies consistently classify as degrading.
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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.