“If men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone, or with his fist, and he doesn’t die, but is confined to bed;
To judge cases of personal injury and compensate the injured party
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
רַק שִׁבְתּוֹ יִתֵּן וְרַפֹּא יְרַפֵּא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין חובל בחבירו. והוא אמרו יתעלה וכי יריבון אנשים, וזו היא הנקרא דיני קנסות. וכבר בא הכתוב שהוא כולל דיני קנסות כולם, והוא אמרו יתעלה כאשר עשה כן יעשה לו שילקח ממנו תמורת מה שציערו לפי שיעור הצער, כמו שבאה בה הקבלה ואפילו לא היה אלא שביישו לבד, הנה הוא יקנס בממונו השעור ההוא. ודע שדיני הקנסות אלו כלם דיני אדם באדם, וכן כשהזיקה בהמה את האדם או האדם את הבהמה, הנה לא ידונו בהם ויקנסו זולת הבית דין הסמוכין בארץ ישראל. וכבר התבארו דקדוקי דין מצוה זו בפרק א' מבבא קמא. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות חובל ומזיק פ"א):
That is that He commanded us about the law of one who injures his fellow. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And when men quarrel" (Exodus 21:26); and this is called, fines. And a verse already came that includes all of the laws of fines - and that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "as he has done, so shall it be done to him" (Leviticus 24:19): That [which is] taken away from him is in exchange for that which he hurt him, according to the measure of the hurt - as it appears in the tradition. And even if it was only that he embarrassed him; behold he is fined this measure of his money. And you should know that all of these laws of fines that are laws between one person and another - and likewise, when an animal damages a person or a person damages an animal - are indeed only judged and fined by a court of those who have been ordained in the Land of Israel. And the details of the law of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 1 of Bava Kamma. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, One Who Injures a Person or 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 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
- A monetary penalty
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
- Restitution (tashlumin)
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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 3.104-107 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.277-278 rationalized it Josephus paraphrases the assault-compensation provision, harmonizing it with a monetary-penalty reading and rationalizing the talionic clause
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:38-39 reinterpreted it Jesus cites 'eye for eye' — the adjacent talion clause (Exod 21:24), not the compensation provision of Exod 21:18-19 — and counsels non-retaliation, a spiritualizing move distinct from the rabbinic monetary reading
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:45 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 injury inflicted in a brawl, with the striker swearing the blow was unintentional and paying the physician's fee; if the victim dies, graded penalties follow by social class Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§206-208 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi talionic and class-stratified penalties for bodily injury, in contrast to the Covenant Code's class-neutral compensatory approach Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§196-201 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws scaled monetary compensation for injury, including provision for the victim's care and a substitute laborer Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§7-18 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (1997)
- laws of eshnunna fixed monetary schedule for bodily injuries (nose, eye, tooth, slap, severed finger, etc.) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§42-48 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 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.