“ ‘You shall not steal. “ ‘You shall not lie. “ ‘You shall not deceive one another.
Not to deny having in one's possession something entrusted by another
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תִּגְנֹבוּ וְלֹא תְכַחֲשׁוּ וְלֹא תְשַׁקְּרוּ אִישׁ בַּעֲמִיתוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו שלא לכחש החובות שנתחייבנו בהם והפקדונות אשר הופקדו אצלנו. והוא אמרו לא תכחשו ונתבאר שבממון הכתוב מדבר. ולשון ספרא לפי שנאמר וכחש בה ונשבע על שקר עונש שמענו אזהרה מנין תלמוד לומר לא תכחשו. וכבר ידעת שהכופר בפקדון פסול לעדות ואע"פ שלא נשבע לעברו על לאו לא תכחשו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת שבועות. (קדושים, הפלאה הלכות שבועות פ"א):
He prohibited us - that we not deny obligations that we are indebted and deposits held by us. And that is His saying, "you shall not deny" (Leviticus 19:11); and it is explained that the verse is speaking about money. And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim, Section 2:3) is "Since it is stated, 'and denies it and swears falsely' (Leviticus 5:22), we have heard the punishment. From where [do we know] the prohibition? [Hence] we learn to say, 'you shall not deny.'" And you already know that one who denies a deposit [being held by him] is disqualified from testimony - even though he did not swear - since he transgressed the negative commandment, "you shall not deny." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Shevuot. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Oaths 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
- 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.30-38 rationalized it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:283 carried a parallel
- Q 4:58 carried a thematic 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 deposit law; denial of entrusted property and false claim of deposit Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§122-126 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna liability of a depositary for entrusted goods and the oath procedure where a deposit is lost or its receipt denied Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§36-37 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.