You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
To use honest weights, measures, and balances
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
מֹאזְנֵי צֶדֶק אַבְנֵי־צֶדֶק אֵיפַת צֶדֶק וְהִין צֶדֶק יִהְיֶה לָכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לצדק הפלס והמאזנים והמשקולות והמדות להפליג בצמצומם. והוא אמרו יתעלה מאזני צדק. ולשון ספרא מאזני צדק צדק את המאזנים יפה אבני צדק צדק את המשקולות יפה, איפת צדק צדק את האיפה יפה, והין צדק צדק את ההין יפה. וכבר נודע שהאיפה היא מדת היבש וההין מדת הלח, ואלה כלם ענינים אם נשתנו מיני השיעורים כפי הדבר שישקול או ימוד אמנם הוא שיעור ערך מן המערכים, ואלו כולם רוצה לומר הפלס והמאזנים והאיפה יקראו מדות והצווי שנצטוינו להפליג בצמצום השיעור המוסכם עליו מכל מין ומין מהם יקרא מצות מדות. ולשון ספרי על תנאי כך הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים על מנת שתקבלו עליכם מצות מדות שכל המודה במצות מדות מודה ביציאת מצרים וכל הכופר בה כופר ביציאת מצרים. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בחמישי מבתרא. (קדושים תהיו, הלכות גנבה ואבדה פ"ח):
That is that He commanded us to justify the leveler, the scales, the weights and the measures; and to maximize their exactness. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Just scales" (Leviticus 19:36). And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim 8:7) is, "'Just scales' - justify the scales well. 'Just weights' - justify the weights well. 'A just ephah' - justify the ephah well. 'And a just hin' - justify the hin well." And it is already known that the ephah is the dry measure and the hin is the wet measure. And all of these matters are one, [even] if the type of measure varies according to the thing that is weighed or measured - regardless, it is a measurement that is evaluated. And all of these - meaning, the leveler, the scales and the ephah - are called measures; and the command, that we have been commanded to maximize the exactitude of the accepted measurement for each and every type, is called the commandment of measures. And the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra, Kedoshim 8:10) is, "On this condition, I brought you out of the Land of Egypt - that you take upon yourselves the commandment of measures. For all who acknowledge the commandment of measures, acknowledge the exodus from Egypt; and all who deny [it], deny the exodus from Egypt." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the fifth [chapter] of [Bava] Batra. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Robbery and Lost Property 8).
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 flat, unconditional command
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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifra Qedoshim, parashah 3 The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic exposition
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.193-218 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 83:1-3 carried a parallel
- Q 17:35 carried a parallel
- Q 11:84-85 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.
- egyptian negative confession denial of weight/balance fraud in the judgment of the dead Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Declaration of Innocence ('I have not falsified the balance'), one of the negative-confession declarations in BD 125 Faulkner, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (1972)
- instruction of amenemope wisdom prohibition against falsifying the balance and shortchanging with dishonest measures, linked to divine abomination Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Chapter 16 (cols. XVII-XVIII) / Chapter 17 (Lichtheim ch. 16-17) Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. II (UC Press, 1976), pp. 146-163
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.