“ ‘You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people. “ ‘You shall not endanger the life of your neighbor. I am Yahweh.
Not to stand idly by while another's life is in danger
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל־דַּם רֵעֶךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מלהתרשל בהצלת נפש אחד כשנראהו בסכנת מות או ההפסד ויהיה לנו יכולת להצילו כמו שהיה טובע בנהר ואנחנו נדע לשחות ונוכל להצילו. או יהיה לסטים משתדל להרגו ונוכל לבטל מחשבתו או לדחות ממנו נזק, ובאה האזהרה באמרו לא תעמוד על דם רעך. וכבר אמרו שמי שיכבוש עדות תכללהו גם כן זאת האזהרה כי הוא רואה ממון חבירו אבד והוא יכול להחזירו אליו באמרו האמת. וכבר בא בזה הענין גם כן אם לא יגיד ונשא עונו. ולשון ספרא מנין שאם אתה יודע לו עדות שאין אתה רשאי לשתוק תלמוד לומר לא תעמוד על דם רעך, ומנין שאם ראית אותו טובע בנהר או חיות או לסטים באין עליו שאתה חייב להצילו ת"ל לא תעמוד על דם רעך. ומשפטי מצוה זו כבר התבארו בסנהדרין. (קדושים, הלכות רוצח פ"א):
He prohibited us from being negligent about saving the life of someone when we see him in mortal danger, or [in a case of] loss, and we have the ability to save him - such as if he was drowning in the river and we know how to swim and are able to save him; or if a robber is trying to kill him and we are able to foil his plan or repel his injury. And the prohibition comes with His saying, "you shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:16). And they already said that one who represses [his] testimony is also included in this prohibition. For he sees the money of his fellow destroyed and he is able to return it to him by saying the truth. And also already appearing about this is, "if he does not tell, he shall bear his iniquity" (Leviticus 5:1). And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 4:8) is, "From where [do we know] that if you know testimony for someone, you are not permitted to remain silent? [Hence] we learn to say, 'you shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor.' And from where [do we know] that if you see someone drowning in the river, or animals or robbers coming against him, you are obligated to rescue him? [Hence] we learn to say, 'you shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor.'" And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Murderer and the Preservation of Life 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 prohibition
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 9:1-8 The catalog describes this reception as: allusive/adjacent Engages the rebuke/talebearing clause of Lev 19 (vv. 16-18) rather than the rescue clause directly; bears on duties of reproof and testimony
The New Testament
- Luke 10:30-37 expanded it homiletically Parable of the Good Samaritan dramatizes the duty; priest and Levite who 'pass by on the other side' embody the violation
- James 4:17 carried a thematic parallel Knowing the good and not doing it is sin — a general statement on sins of omission with conceptual affinity to the rescue duty, but no demonstrable literary dependence on Lev 19:16
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 narrow liability of one who, present at a fire to help, instead loots the burning house (penalty: cast into the fire); contrasts with a general rescue duty Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §25 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna liability provisions for a goring ox that has killed (owner's disclosure/penalty duties); cited to illustrate that Eshnunna, like other ANE corpora, frames duties around active-wrong liability rather than any positive duty to rescue, highlighting the Levitical innovation Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§53-54 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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.