“You shall not commit adultery.
Not to covet another person's possessions
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תַחְמֹד בֵּית רֵעֶךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהשים מחשבתנו לעשות תחבולה כדי לקנות מה שברשות זולתנו מאחינו. והוא אמרו לא תחמוד בית רעך. ולשון מכילתא לא תחמוד יכול אפילו חומד בדבור תלמוד לומר לא תחמוד כסף וזהב מה להלן עד שיעשה מעשה אף כאן עד שיעשה מעשה. הנה יתבאר לך כי זה הלאו מזהיר מהערים עד שנקח לעצמנו הדבר שאנחנו חומדים אותו ממון אחינו ואפילו לקנותו ולתת בו דמים, הנה זה כלו מי שיעשהו עובר על לא תחמוד. (וישמע יתרו, הלכות גזילה פ"א):
He prohibited us from putting our thoughts to fabricating machinations in order to acquire that which is in the possession of our other brothers (fellow Jews). And that is His saying, "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house" (Exodus 20:14). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:14:3) is, "'You shall not covet' - perhaps even if one covets with speech? [Hence] we learn to say, 'You shall not covet the silver and gold' (Deuteronomy 7:25). Just as there, [he is not liable] until he performs an act, so [too], here [he is not liable] until he performs an act." Behold it has been made clear to you that this negative commandment prohibits us from tricks that [enable] us to take our brother's property, that we have been coveting, for ourselves - even when we buy it and give him money. Whoever does any of this is surely transgressing, "You shall not covet." (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Robbery and Lost Property 1.)
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
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 4:15-18 (the 'three nets of Belial') expanded it homiletically
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesikta Rabbati 21 (the Decalogue piska) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.78-81 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.91-92 affirmed it affirmed within Josephus's paraphrase of the Decalogue
The New Testament
- Romans 7:7 reinterpreted it Paul uses ouk epithymēseis ('thou shalt not covet') as the exemplary commandment that defines sin through interior desire
- Romans 13:9 reinterpreted it lists coveting among commandments subsumed and summed up under love of neighbor
- Matthew 5:27-28 The catalog describes this reception as: analogical internalizing analogical only: an internalizing hermeneutic applied to adultery/lust rather than to coveting directly
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, De Spiritu et Littera (on 'non concupisces' and the law revealing concupiscence) read it spiritually
- Origen, Homiliae in Exodum 8 read it allegorically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:32 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 declarant swears innocence of coveting and wrongful acquisition ('I have not coveted,' 'I have not taken,' 'I have not stolen'), though as a post-mortem ethical declaration rather than a prohibition legislating interior desire Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Ch. 125 (Declaration of Innocence / 'negative confessions') Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, 1972 (rev. ed.)
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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UDHR Article 18-19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
Insofar as the prohibition targets an interior mental state (desire itself) rather than only acquisitive action, it claims legal jurisdiction over thought — a domain that post-Enlightenment frameworks treat as categorically beyond state regulation. The absence of any court-imposed sanction (punishment_class: none) limits this to a theoretical tension, and Moran's influential reading reinterprets the prohibition as behavioral, but the scholarly dispute leaves the thought-crime dimension unresolved.