for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What would he sleep in? It will happen, when he cries to me, that I will hear, for I am gracious.
Not to curse a judge
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֱלֹהִים לֹא תְקַלֵּל וְנָשִׂיא בְעַמְּךָ לֹא תָאֹר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מלקלל הדיין. והוא אמרו אלהים לא תקלל. והעובר על לאו זה לוקה. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות סנהדרין פרק כ"ו):
He prohibited us from cursing a judge. And that is His saying, "You shall not curse the powers" (Exodus 22:27). And one who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, The Sanhedrin and the Penalties within their Jurisdiction 26.)
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 Binding
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- 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 1.53 reinterpreted it Philo, reading the LXX plural rendering theous, interprets the clause as forbidding Jews (and proselytes) from reviling the gods worshipped by other peoples; his stated rationale is pragmatic and apologetic (avoiding retaliatory blasphemy against the God of Israel), not a blasphemy-of-YHWH provision.
- De Vita Mosis 2.203-208 reinterpreted it In the Egyptian-blasphemer narrative, Philo distinguishes Lev 24:15 ('whoever curses his god') from 24:16 ('whoever names the name of YHWH'), reading 24:15 as protecting the deities of other nations and 24:16 as the blasphemy-of-YHWH provision; the same interpretive move underwrites his reading of Exod 22:28 LXX in Spec. Leg. 1.53.
Josephus
- Ant. 4.207 reinterpreted it Josephus paraphrases the verse as a prohibition against blaspheming the gods that other cities regard as such and against robbing foreign sanctuaries — i.e., he reads the LXX theous as the gods of other peoples, paralleling Philo's interpretation and serving an apologetic function in a Greco-Roman context.
- Contra Apionem 2.237 reinterpreted it Cited as evidence of Mosaic restraint: 'our legislator hath expressly forbidden us to laugh at, and revile those that are esteemed gods by other people, on account of the very name of God ascribed to them' — reading Exod 22:28 LXX as a prohibition against reviling foreign deities.
The New Testament
- Acts 23:5 affirmed it Paul, having reviled the high priest, cites Exod 22:27 ('You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people'); note that this quotation reproduces the SECOND clause (the nasi/ruler clause, more directly tied to commandment #425) rather than the first 'Elohim/judge' clause legislated here; nonetheless demonstrates Second Temple application of the verse to standing authority
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 Hammurabi presents himself as divinely appointed by the gods to establish justice and protect the weak, framing the judicial order as grounded in divine sanction Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Prologue (i 1 – v 24) 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.
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Article 5
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Maimonides (Hilkhot Sanhedrin 26:1) prescribes corporal flogging (up to thirty-nine lashes) as the penalty for cursing a judge; UDHR Article 5 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment, which post-Enlightenment penal theory uniformly classifies flogging to be.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The application of thirty-nine lashes for a verbal offense against a judicial officer violates modern proportionality norms, which require that punishment be commensurate with harm caused; no contemporary penal code imposes corporal punishment for speech acts of this kind.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital and corporal jurisdiction, including the authority to administer lashes, lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin following the destruction of the Second Temple; the lashes penalty is de jure operative but de facto unenforceable in all extant legal systems.