“You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds those who have sight and perverts the words of the righteous.
Not to accept bribes in judgment
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְשֹׁחַד לֹא תִקָּח כִּי הַשֹּׁחַד יְעַוֵּר פִּקְחִים וִיסַלֵּף דִּבְרֵי צַדִּיקִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר הדיין שלא לקחת שוחד מבעלי הריב ואפילו לדון אמת. והוא אמרו יתעלה ושחד לא תקח. וכבר נכפלה האזהרה בזה הענין. ובספרי לא תקח שחד אפילו לזכות את הזכאי ולחייב החייב. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במקומות מסנהדרין. (ואלה המשפטים, שם פרק כ"ג):
That He prohibited the judge from taking a bribe from the disputants, even to judge truthfully. That is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You shall not take a bribe" (Exodus 23:8). And the prohibition about this content has already been repeated. And in the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 144:10): "'You shall not take a bribe' - even to exculpate the innocent and to inculpate the guilty." And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in [various] places in Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, The Sanhedrin and the Penalties within their Jurisdiction 23.)
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 As the catalog records it: binding scriptural
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
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Kaspa 20 (on Exod 23:8) expanded it homiletically
- Sifre Deuteronomy 144 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.55-66 The catalog describes this reception as: expanded
Josephus
- Ant. 4.216 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:188 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.
- egyptian negative confession denial of judicial/economic corruption among the negative confessions of the deceased Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence the negative-confession declarations (conventionally ~42 in number) Allen, The Book of the Dead (1974)
- instruction of amenemope wisdom instruction warning officials against accepting gifts from litigants and ensuring proper conduct in court proceedings; reflects the wider Egyptian anti-corruption ethic Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Chapter 20 Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. II (UC Press, 1976), pp. 146-163
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 an incompatible method.
The prohibition against accepting bribes is fully consonant with modern anti-corruption law, but its prescribed sanction of thirty-nine lashes (malkot) constitutes judicially imposed corporal punishment that UDHR Article 5 classifies as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Modern proportionality doctrine categorically prohibits corporal punishment as a penal instrument; the lash sanction for judicial bribery conflicts with this principle independent of the question of whether the underlying prohibition is itself proportionate.
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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 malkot sanction for accepting bribes is de jure operative in Orthodox enumeration but has been effectively suspended for approximately two millennia.