“If a man sells his daughter to be a female servant, she shall not go out as the male servants do.
To judge according to the laws of a Hebrew bondwoman
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכִי־יִמְכֹּר אִישׁ אֶת־בִּתּוֹ לְאָמָה לֹא תֵצֵא כְּצֵאת הָעֲבָדִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לישא אמה העבריה אדוניה שקנה אותה או בנו וזו היא מצות יעוד קודמת למצות פדיה באמרו אשר לא יעדה והפדה. ודע שדין עבד עברי ודין אמה העבריה אינו נוהג אלא בזמן שהיובל נוהג. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ד ממסכת קדושין.
That is that He commanded us that the master who acquired a Hebrew (Jewish) maidservant marry her - [he] or his son. And that is the commandment of designation [that] has precedence over the commandment of redemption, by His saying, "who designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed" (Exodus 21:8). But you should know that the law of a Hebrew slave and a Hebrew maidservant are only practiced at the time that the Jubilee is practiced. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 4 of Tractate Kiddushin.
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.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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 Inoperative
- Conservative Inoperative
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Inoperative
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 2.79-85 rationalized it
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 inheritance status of children of a slave-concubine designated as secondary wife Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§170-171 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws veiling rules distinguishing wives from concubines and the act of elevating a concubine to wife status Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §§40-41 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of lipit ishtar inheritance standing of children born to a slave-woman by her master alongside the children of the free wife Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§25-26 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.
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Article 16(1)(b) (right to freely choose a spouse and to enter marriage only with free and full consent)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment regulates the sale of a daughter by her father into a household where she is designated as a wife or concubine — a transaction in which the daughter's own consent is not the operative legal fact. CEDAW Article 16(1)(b) requires that marriage be entered only with the free and full consent of the intending spouse.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The male bondman acquires release after six years by operation of law, whereas the female bondwoman's freedom is mediated through a marriage-based framework in which the father conducts the transaction and the woman's legal standing depends on the master's conjugal intentions — a structural asymmetry incompatible with equal legal personhood.
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Article 36 (protection against all forms of exploitation prejudicial to the child's welfare)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The sale of a daughter by her father to a master for labor or conjugal purposes — a transaction explicitly permissible only while the daughter is a minor (rabbinic codification) — is incompatible with the CRC's broad prohibition on the exploitation of children.