“ ‘Moreover you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death. He shall surely be put to death.
Not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of a capital crime
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא־תִקְחוּ כֹפֶר לְנֶפֶשׁ רֹצֵחַ אֲשֶׁר־הוּא רָשָׁע לָמוּת כִּי־מוֹת יוּמָת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מקחת כופר מן ההורג במזיד אבל יהרג על כל פנים. והוא אמרו לא תקחו כופר לנפש רוצח אשר הוא רשע למות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במכות. (שם, שם פ"ה):
He prohibited the taking of ransom from an intentional murderer. Rather he must be killed under any circumstances. And that is His saying, "And you shall not take ransom for the soul of a murderer who is liable for death" (Numbers 35:31). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Makkot. (See Parashat Masei; Mishneh Torah, Murderer and the Preservation of Life 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 prohibition
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
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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 3.83-85 affirmed it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.279 (homicide penalties) affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:178 set it in contrast
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 fixes a payment of silver (half a mina) where a free man dies from a blow struck in a brawl, with §208 setting a lower sum for a commoner — illustrates the broader ANE acceptance of monetary composition for death, against which Num 35:31's no-ransom rule stands; note that LH treats deliberate murder distinctly Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §207 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws homicide provisions prescribing composition (delivery of persons/heads) by the offender rather than mandatory execution — the ANE optionality of monetary/personnel composition for killing, which the biblical no-ransom prohibition rejects Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§1-4 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna fixed monetary penalties for bodily injury sustained in a brawl (injury rather than homicide), reflecting the broader ANE pattern of monetary composition for physical harm Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§47-47A Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws homicide provision affording the victim's heirs the option to put the offender to death or to take composition — the very optionality that the biblical no-ransom rule prohibits Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast A §10 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.