“ ‘If you sell anything to your neighbor, or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another.
To adjudicate laws regarding purchasing and acquiring property
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכִי־תִמְכְּרוּ מִמְכָּר לַעֲמִיתֶךָ אוֹ קָנֹה מִיַּד עֲמִיתֶךָ אַל־תּוֹנוּ אִישׁ אֶת־אָחִיו
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין מקח וממכר רוצה לומר הפנים אשר בה יתקיים המכר בין המוכר והקונה. וכבר לקחו ראיה על אלה הפנים מאמרו וכי תמכרו ממכר לעמיתך או קנה מיד וגו'. וכבר אמרו (ב"מ מ"ז:) דבר הנקנה מיד ליד כלומר משיכה. וכבר התבאר שם שמדבר תורה מעות קונות והמשיכה במטלטלין תקנת חכמים היא וכן המסירה וההגבהה. ובבאור אמרו שם כדרך שתקנו משיכה במוכרין תקנו משיכה בלקוחות. הנה התבאר לך שהיותם מצריכים המשיכה בממכרים מפני שהיא תקנה כמו שהתבאר במקומו. ואולם שאר הפנים שקונין בהם הקרקעות וזולתם כלומר שטר וחזקה הנה סמכו אותו לכתוב גם כן. וכבר התבארו משפטי דין זה רוצה לומר הפנים שיתקיים המקח בהם בכל מין ומין בפרק א' מקדושין ובפ"ד וח' וט' ממציעא וג' וד' וה' וו' וז' מבתרא. (בהר סיני, הלכות מכירה בי"א פרקים):
That is that He commanded us about the law of buying and selling - meaning the ways in which the sale between the seller and buyer is effectuated. And they already brought as a proof about these ways, His saying, "When you surely sell to your kinsman, or buy from the hand, etc." (Leviticus 25:14). And they already said (Bava Metzia 47b), "Something that is acquired from one hand to another - meaning to say, [by] pulling [it]." And there, it is already explained that, from the Torah, money effectuates an acquisition, whereas the pulling (meshikhah) of movable objects is an ordinance of the Sages, and likewise giving over (mesirah) and raising up (hagbaha). And in explanation, they said there, "In the same way that they established, pulling for [purchases], they established pulling for guardians." Behold it has already been made clear to you that they needed pulling for sales and therefore made an ordinance, as is explained in its place. Moreover, the rest of the ways with which one acquires lands and other things - meaning a contract or a holding (chazakah) - were also surely [only] attached to verses (and not derived from them). And the regulations of this law - meaning the ways through which a sale is effectuated with each and every type - have already been explained in Chapter 1 of Kiddushin and Chapter 4, 8 and 9 of [Bava] Metzia] and 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of [Bava] Batra. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sales 1-10.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.193ff (judicial integrity and fair dealing) affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.282-285 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 83:1-6 (al-Mutaffifin; defrauding in measure/weight) 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 commercial partnership and agency regulation Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§100-107 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- edict of ammisaduqa royal debt-release (misharum) decree Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§1-22 Kraus, Königliche Verfügungen in altbabylonischer Zeit (1984)
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.