“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice.
Not to follow the majority to do evil in perverting justice
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִהְיֶ֥ה אַחֲרֵֽי־רַבִּ֖ים לְרָעֹ֑ת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר הדיין מהטות לדעת דיין אחד על צד ההשען אליו בחיוב החייב או זכות הזכאי מבלתי שיהיה הדבר מובן אצלו לפי הקשו ושכלו מהקדמות התורה, והוא אמרו לא תענה על ריב לנטות, רצה בזה לא תבקש בריב הנטיה והוא שתטה עם הרוב או עם הגדולים ושתשתוק במה שיש בנפשך בדין ההוא. ולשון מכילתא לא תענה שלא תאמר בשעת מנין די בשאהיה כאיש פלוני אלא אמור מה שלפניך יכול אף דיני ממונות כן תלמוד לומר אחרי רבים להטות. ומזה הלאו גם כן האזהרה למלמד זכות שלא יחזור וילמד חובה לאמרו לא תענה על ריב, וכן מחזירין לזכות ואין מחזירין לחובה וכן אין מתחילים מן הגדול, כל אלו הדברים אמנם נלמדו מאמרו לא תענה על ריב כמו שהתבאר בפ"ד מסנהדרין (דף ל"ז) ושם התבארו משפטי מצוה זו. (משפטים, הלכות סנהדרין פ"י):
He prohibited the judge from inclining towards the opinion of another judge, by way of relying upon him in incriminating the guilty or acquitting the innocent - without the matter being understood by him, according to his own analysis and intellect, based on the principles of the Torah. And that is His saying, "and do not answer in the dispute, to incline" (Exodus 23:2). This means, do not seek to incline in a dispute - and that is that you incline with the majority or with the great [scholars], and that you remain silent about what your opinion is in this case. And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 23:2) is, "'Do not answer' - that you not say at the time of the count (vote), 'It is sufficient for me to be like Mr. x.' Rather say what is in front of you. Perhaps financial cases [are like this] as well? [Hence] we learn to say, 'after many to incline.'" And also from this negative commandment is the prohibition on the one who was arguing for acquittal - that he not go back and argue for incrimination - from His saying, "do not answer in the dispute." And likewise that we reconvene for acquittal, but not for incrimination; and likewise [that] we do not begin [a case] with the great [judge]. Indeed, all of these things were learned out from His saying, "and do not answer in the dispute," as it is explained in Chapter 4 of Sanhedrin. And the regulations of this commandment have been explained there. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, The Sanhedrin and the Penalties within their Jurisdiction 10.)
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.
- 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 4.59-61 rationalized it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:8 carried a parallel
- Q 4:135 carried a parallel
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 ideal of the just judge / incorruptible verdict Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Prologue/Epilogue (no section numbering; judicial integrity rhetoric) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi penalty against a judge who alters his rendered verdict Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §5 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 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.