“If fire breaks out, and catches in thorns so that the shocks of grain, or the standing grain, or the field are consumed; he who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.
To adjudicate the laws regarding an unpaid guardian
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אִם־לֹא יִמָּצֵא הַגַּנָּב וְנִקְרַב בַּעַל־הַבַּיִת אֶל־הָאֱלֹהִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין שומר חנם. והוא אמרו יתעלה כי יתן איש אל רעהו כסף. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בפ"ט מקמא וממציעא וח' משבועות. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות שאלה ופקדון בחמשה פרקים):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the unpaid guardian. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "When a man gives to his neigbor money" (Exodus 22:6). And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 9 of [Bava] Kamma and of [Bava] Metzia and 8 of Shevuot. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Borrowing and Deposit 1-5.)
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, with modification
- 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
Josephus
- Ant. 4.285-288 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:283 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 deposit/bailment liability and false-claim penalties Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§120-126 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi requirement of witnesses for valid deposit Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §122 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi double compensation for denied witnessed deposit Relationship to the parallel: direct parallel §124 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna liability of custodian for entrusted goods, resolved by exculpatory oath 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.