He may sentence him to no more than forty stripes. He shall not give more, lest if he should give more and beat him more than that many stripes, then your brother will be degraded in your sight.
Not to administer more lashes than the prescribed number (forty minus one)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַרְבָּעִים יַכֶּנּוּ לֹא יֹסִיף פֶּן־יֹסִיף לְהַכֹּתוֹ עַל־אֵלֶּה מַכָּה רַבָּה וְנִקְלָה אָחִיךָ לְעֵינֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר הדיין מהכות החוטא הכאות גדולות ממיתות, ובאור זה שכל המחוייב מלקות הנה תכלית מה שילקה ארבעים חסר אחת כמו שבא בקבלה שלא יכה אדם עד שישער ההכאה באדם המוכה לפי כחו ושניו ומזגו וצורת גופו אם יכול לסבול הכאת העונש כלו יוכה ואם לאו יוכה כפי שיעור סבלו לא פחות משלש הכאות, אמרו כדי רשעתו במספר, ובאה האזהרה מהוסיף בהכאתו ואפילו הכאה אחת נוספת על השערת הדיין שיוכל לסבול. והוא אמרו כדי רשעתו במספר ארבעים יכנו לא יוסיף. ולשון ספרי אם הוסיף עובר בלא תעשה אין לי אלא שמוסיף על הארבעים מנין על כל אומד ואומד שאמדוהו בית דין תלמוד לומר לא יוסיף פן יוסיף. ומזאת אזהרה היא אזהרה מהכות כל איש מישראל, אם החוטא אנו מוזהרין שלא להכותו שאר כל אדם לא כל שכן. וכבר הזהירנו מלרמוז להכות אפילו לא יכה אמרו (סנהדרין נ"ח:) כל המגביה ידו על חבירו נקרא רשע שנאמר ויאמר לרשע למה תכה רעך. (תצא, סנהדרין פט"ז):
That He prohibited the judge from striking the sinner with great lethal strikes. And the explanation of this is that the limit on all those who are liable for lashes is surely that he is lashed forty minus one, as it appears in the tradition; such that he not strike a person until he assesses the man that will be struck, according to his strength, his years, his condition and the form of his body. If he can withstand the entire striking of the punishment, he is struck [accordingly]. But if not, he is struck according to the measure of what he can withstand - [though] not less than three lashes, [based on] His saying, "according to his wickedness in number" (Deuteronomy 25:2). And the prohibition comes about adding - even one lash beyond the judge's assessment of what he can withstand - to his striking. And that is His saying, "according to his wickedness in number. Forty is he to strike him, he may not add" (Deuteronomy 25:2-3). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 286:10) is, "If he does add, he transgresses a negative commandment. I only know of his adding to the forty. From where [do we know the same for his going beyond] each and every assessment that the court assessed? Hence we learn to say, 'he may not add, lest he add.'" And from this prohibition is [derived] the prohibition to strike any Israelite - if we are prohibited from striking the sinner, all the more so do we not strike any [other] person. And He already prohibited us from hinting as if one will strike, even if he does not strike. They said (Sanhedrin 58b), "Anyone who raises his hand against his fellow is called, an evildoer - as it is stated (Exodus 2:13), 'and he said to the evildoer, "Why would you strike your fellow."'" (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, The Sanhedrin and the Penalties within their Jurisdiction 16.)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §286 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3 (on scourging) rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.238 paraphrased it
The New Testament
- 2 Corinthians 11:24 The catalog describes this reception as: attested Paul descriptively attests the thirty-nine-lash ('forty minus one') practice as operative in 1st c. CE synagogue discipline; this is testimony to the practice, not a normative endorsement of the commandment
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.
- middle assyrian laws slander that a man's wife is sexually promiscuous, penalized by forty blows and a period of state/royal labor — comparable use of a fixed corporal count Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §18 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws fifty blows prescribed within the veiling statute (alongside additional penalties such as pouring pitch and ear-piercing/mutilation) Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast A §40 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 5
This framework classifies the relation as compatible, with qualification.
The commandment's explicit purpose — preventing the degradation of a convicted person through excess punishment — is directionally aligned with UDHR Article 5's prohibition of cruel and degrading treatment; however, it presupposes the legitimacy of up to thirty-nine lashes as a baseline, which itself constitutes degrading treatment under contemporary international human rights standards regardless of the ceiling imposed.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the power to impose Torah-prescribed lashes lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; the commandment's restraining function therefore operates within a penal framework that has itself been suspended for approximately two millennia.