“You shall not murder.
Not to kidnap a person
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תִּגְנֹב
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר שלא לגנוב איש מישראל. והוא אמרו בעשרת הדברות לא תגנוב. ולשון מכילתא לא תגנוב אזהרה לגונב נפש. ובגמרא סנהדרין (דף פ"ז) אמרו אזהרה לגונב נפשות מנין רבי יאשיה אומר מלא תגנוב רבי יוחנן אמר מלא ימכרו ממכרת עבד ולא פליגי מר קא חשיב לאו דמכירה וכו' שלא יקיימו עליו העונש עד שיגנוב וימכור וכשעבר על שני לאוין אלו הוא חייב חנק כאמרו יתעלה וגונב איש ומכרו וגו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בא' מסנהדרין. (יתרו, הלכות גניבה פ"ט):
He prohibited - to not steal (kidnap) an Israelite person. And that is His saying in the Ten Commandments, "you shall not steal" (Exodus 20:13). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:13:3) is, "'You shall not steal,' is the prohibition against stealing a soul." And in the Gemara, Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 86a) they said, "From where [do we know] the prohibition against stealing souls? Rabbi Yoshiya says, 'From, "you shall not steal."' Rabbi Yochanan says, 'From, "They shall not be sold as slaves" (Leviticus 25:42).' And they do not disagree. One enumerates the prohibition against selling, etc." As they do not execute the punishment upon him until he steals (kidnaps) and sells. But once he transgressed these two negative commandments, he is liable for strangulation - as He, may He be exalted, said, "And one who steals a soul and sells him, etc." (Exodus 21:16). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in [Chapter] 1 of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Theft 9.)
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
- Death by strangulation (ḥenek)
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
- Genesis Rabbah 84:17 expanded it homiletically thematic association via the sale of Joseph rather than direct halakhic exposition of genevat nefesh
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.13-19 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.271 affirmed it
The New Testament
- 1 Timothy 1:10 affirmed it andrapodistēs ('slave-trader'/'kidnapper') listed among the lawless, reflecting the gonev nefesh tradition
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 kidnapping of a free man's minor son, capital Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §14 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws abduction/removal of persons across borders, compensatory penalties rather than capital punishment Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§19-21 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites (1997); 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.
Exodus 21:16 and Deuteronomy 24:7 prescribe capital punishment (death by strangling, per Mishnah Sanhedrin 11:1) for kidnapping and enslavement; modern penal proportionality and ICCPR Article 6 restrict capital punishment to cases involving intentional killing, and international human-rights bodies have consistently held that kidnapping alone does not meet the threshold of 'most serious crimes' warranting the death penalty.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6(2) permits capital punishment only for 'the most serious crimes,' a threshold that the Human Rights Committee has interpreted as requiring intentional killing; the biblical death sentence for kidnapping-for-enslavement without homicide exceeds this limit under international human-rights law.
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abrogated_in_practice
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital jurisdiction lapsed with the exile of the Sanhedrin from the Temple precincts (b. Sanhedrin 41a); the death-by-strangling sanction exists de jure in halakhic codes but has not been administered by any recognized Jewish court since late antiquity.