“ ‘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 rob another person through force
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תִגְזֹל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו שלא לגזול מה שאין לנו בו זכות באונס והכרח. והוא אמרו לא תגזול. וכן בארו בעלי הקבלה לא תגזול כענין ויגזול את החנית מיד המצרי. והוא לאו הניתק לעשה. והוא אמרו והשיב את הגזילה ואפילו בטל את העשה אינו לוקה לפי שהוא לאו ניתק לעשה לתשלומין. שאם שרף את הגזלה או השליכה בים יתן מה שהיתה שוה. ואם כפר בה ונשבע לשקר מוסיף חומש ויקריב קרבן אשם כמו שיתבאר במקומו, וכן התבאר בסוף מכות (דף ט"ז). וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשביעי מקמא. (שם, שם פ"י):
He prohibited us - that we not steal that to we which we do not have entitlement, by force and duress. And that is His saying, "and you shall not rob" (Leviticus 19:13). And so have the masters of the tradition explained (Bava Kamma 79b) - "you shall not rob," is like the content of, "and he robbed the spear from the hand of the Egyptian" (II Samuel 23:21). And it is a negative commandment that is rectified by a positive commandment; and that is His saying, "he shall return the stolen property" (Leviticus 5:23). But even if he nullified the positive commandment, he is not lashed, since it is a negative commandment that is given to repayment - such that if he burned the stolen property or threw it to the sea, he can give [back] what it was worth. However, if he denied it and swore falsely, he adds a fifth and sacrifices a guilt-offering, as is explained in its place (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandments 71); and likewise is it explained at the end of Makkot (Makkot 16a). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the seventh [chapter] of [Bava] Kamma. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Theft 10.)
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
- A monetary penalty
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
- Restitution (tashlumin)
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 Binding
- Reconstructionist Binding
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 6:15-17 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 31:5 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.1-12 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.271-272 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:25 expanded it homiletically harpagē ('plunder/rapacity'); some interpreters take the term as continuing a prophetic-ethical critique of extraction
- Luke 3:14 expanded it homiletically John the Baptist warns soldiers against extortion (diaseiō)
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:29 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 robbery with capital liability and communal-restitution provision when robber not caught Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§22-24 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws livestock theft and graded restitution/valuation provisions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§57-70 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- egyptian negative confession denial of robbery and seizure of property Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary Declaration of Innocence (B) Allen, The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day (1974)
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.