“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice.
To decide cases based on the majority opinion of the judges
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַחֲרֵי רַבִּים לְהַטֹּת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה לנטות אחרי רבים כשתפול מחלוקת בין החכמים בדין מדיני התורה כלה וכן נמשך ונטה בדין פרטי בין ראובן ושמעון דרך משל כשתפול מחלוקת בין דייני עירם אם שמעון הוא חייב אם ראובן, נמשך אחר הרוב. והוא אמרו יתעלה אחרי רבים להטות. ובבאור אמרו (חולין י"א) רובא דאורייתא. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו ודקדוקיה ופירושיה במקומות מסנהדרין. (שופטים ושוטרים, הלכות ממרים פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to follow the majority when there is a disagreement among the sages about any of the laws of the Torah. And likewise should we be drawn and directed in a private decision - by way of illustration - between Reuven and Shimon: If there is a disagreement between the judges of their city, whether Shimon or Reuven is liable, we are drawn after the majority. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "after the majority to incline." (Exodus 23:2). And in the explanation (Chullin 11a), they said, "[Judgement according to the] majority is from the Torah." And the regulations of this commandment, its analysis and its clarification have already been explained in [various] places in Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Rebels 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 flat, unconditional command
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Position not stated
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
- b. Bava Metzia 59b (Oven of Akhnai) expanded it homiletically
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 contested ownership claims resolved through witness testimony and oaths before judges; a witness-procedure analogue for establishing a matter through corroborated testimony, not a direct parallel to judicial majority-voting Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§9-13 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.