you shall surely set him whom Yahweh your God chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one from among your brothers. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
Not to appoint a foreigner as king over Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תוּכַל לָתֵת עָלֶיךָ אִישׁ נָכְרִי אֲשֶׁר לֹא־אָחִיךָ הוּא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו שלא למנות עלינו מלך איש שלא יהיה מזרע ישראל אע"פ שיהיה גר צדק. והוא אמרו לא תוכל לתת עליך איש נכרי אשר לא מאחיך הוא. ולשון ספרי לא תוכל לתת עליך איש נכרי זו מצות לא תעשה. וכן שאר המנויין אינו מותר שנמנה עלינו בענין מהענינים לא מנוי תורה ולא מנוי מלכות איש שיהיה מקהל גרים עד שתהיה אמו מישראל, באמרו שום תשים עליך מלך מקרב אחיך תשים עליך, אמרו (קדושין ע"ו:) כל משימות שאתה משים לא יהיו אלא מקרב אחיך. אמנם המלכות לבד כבר ידעת מספרי הנבואה שזכה בה דוד וכן זרעו אחריו עד סוף כל הדורות אין מלך למי שיאמין תורת משה אדון כל הנביאים אלא מזרע שלמה לבד וכל מי שהוא מזולת זה הזרע הנכבד לענין מלכות נכרי קרינא ביה כמו שכל זרע אחר בלתי זרע אהרן לענין עבודה זר קרינא ביה, וזה מבואר אין ספק בו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במקומות מיבמות וסוטה וסנהדרין. (שופטים, הלכות מלכים פ"א):
He prohibited us - that we not appoint as a king upon ourselves, a man who is not of the seed of Israel, even if he be a righteous convert. And that is His saying, "you may not place over yourself a foreigner who is not among your brothers" (Deuteronomy 17:15). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 157:9) is, "'You may not place over yourself a foreigner' - that is a negative commandment." And likewise with the rest of the appointments: It is not permissible that we appoint any of the appointments over us - whether it is a Torah position or a governmental position - a man that is from the congregation of converts, until his mother be an Israelite. About His saying, "Surely appoint over yourselves a king [...], a king from among your brothers shall you appoint over yourselves," they said (Kiddushin 76b), "Any appointments that you appoint shall only be from among your brothers." Of course, concerning the monarchy specifically, you have already known from the books of prophecy that David - and, likewise, his seed after him - have already acquired it: For all generations, there is no king for one who believes in the Torah of Moshe - the master of all prophets - besides one from the seed of Shlomo, exclusively. And anyone who is not from that glorious seed is called, an outsider, regarding the monarchy - just like anyone who is from any other seed besides the seed of Aharon is called, an outsider, regarding the [Temple] service. And this is clear - there is no doubt about it. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in [various] places in Yevamot, Sotah and Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 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 prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Binding in the land of Israel
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
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) LVI-LIX (Law of the King) read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.157 paraphrased it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.223 affirmed it
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.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties the suzerain binds vassals to the imperially designated crown prince; accession of an unsanctioned outsider is treated as treaty breach — the inverse of the Deuteronomic requirement that the king be chosen from within the people Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Esarhaddon Succession Treaty (SAA 2 no. 6), loyalty-to-designated-successor stipulations Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- hittite vassal treaties suzerain controls vassal succession and the identity of legitimate throne-claimants; the ANE norm is external imposition, contrasting with the Deuteronomic requirement of internal kinship-based selection Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Succession stipulations (e.g., Treaty of Suppiluliuma I with Shattiwaza; Treaty with Huqqana of Hayasa) Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
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 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The prohibition bars individuals from holding the highest political office solely on the basis of ethnic or national origin (*nokhri*, 'foreigner'); ICCPR Article 26 guarantees equal protection of the law without discrimination on grounds including national origin, and modern constitutional frameworks uniformly prohibit ethnicity-based exclusions from public office.
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Article 21
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 21 establishes the right to participate in government and to equal access to public service; categorically excluding non-Israelites from the highest office of state on the basis of ethnic identity contradicts this universalist guarantee and aligns more closely with modern definitions of ethnic discrimination.