When you build a new house, then you shall make a railing around your roof, so that you don’t bring blood on your house if anyone falls from there.
Not to allow dangerous conditions to exist on one's property
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא־תָשִׂים דָּמִים בְּבֵיתֶךָ כִּי־יִפֹּל הַנֹּפֵל מִמֶּנּוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהניח המוקשים והמכשולות בארצנו ובבתינו כדי שלא ימותו בהם בני אדם. והוא אמרו ולא תשים דמים בביתך. ולשון ספרי ועשית מעקה זו מצות עשה, ולא תשים דמים זו מצות לא תעשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"א משקלים ובסדר נזיקין. (תצא, שם פי"א):
He prohibited us from leaving obstacles and stumbling blocks in our land and in our homes, so that people not die from them. And that is His saying, "and do not place blood in your house" (Deuteronomy 22:8). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 229:6) is, "'You shall make a railing for your roof' - that is a positive commandment. 'And do not place blood in your house' - that is a negative commandment." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 1 of Shekalim and in the Order of Nezikin. (See Parashat Ki Teitzeh; Mishneh Torah, Murderer and the Preservation of Life 11.)
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
- 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 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 3.147-149 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.276-277 affirmed 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 liability for fatal construction defects (collapsing house killing householder/son; §§231-233 extend to slave and property) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§229-230 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna liability for a leaning wall the owner failed to repair that collapses and kills Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §58 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.