But of the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes;
Not to let any of the seven Canaanite nations survive
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תְחַיֶּה כָּל נְשָׁמָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו שלא להחיות איש משבעה עממין כדי שלא יתיחדו בם בני אדם ויסיתום לע"ז. והוא אמרו לא תחיה כל נשמה, והריגתם מצות עשה כמו שבארנו במצוה קפ"ז, ומי שעבר ולא הרג מהם והיה אפשר לו להרגו עבר על מצות לא תעשה. (שופטים ושוטרים, מלכים פ"ה):
He prohibited us from keeping someone from the seven nations alive - so that people not isolate themselves with him and he incite them to idolatry. And that is His saying, "you shall not let a soul remain alive" (Deuteronomy 20:16). And their killing is a positive commandment, as we explained in [Positive] Commandment 187. And one who transgresses it and does not kill one of them, when it was possible for him to kill him, has transgressed a negative commandment. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 5.)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Conservative Rejected
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Not 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)
- 1QM (War Scroll) The catalog describes this reception as: eschatologized
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 17:6 expanded it homiletically
- y. Shevi'it 6:1 reinterpreted it
Josephus
- Ant. 5.1 (Joshua conquest narrative) reinterpreted it
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homilies on Joshua 8.1 read it allegorically
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 total devastation / curse-language of annihilation against treaty-breakers Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary §§56-106 (curse section) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties extirpation curse language calling for complete annihilation of all living members of a disloyal party parallels the herem prohibition against sparing any living thing (*kol neshamah*) in the Canaanite cities Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary Curse section (SAA 2 no. 6, §§56-106) Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
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 3
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The prohibition on allowing any living person in the Canaanite cities to survive (*kol neshamah*) mandates the killing of the entire civilian population — men, women, and children — which directly contradicts UDHR Article 3's guarantee of the universal right to life.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6 establishes the inherent right to life as non-derogable; the absolute prohibition on sparing any inhabitant of the seven Canaanite cities constitutes a commanded program of mass killing that brooks no exception and is irreconcilable with this right.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The phrase *kol neshamah* ('every breathing thing') encompasses children, who are among those the commandment prohibits sparing; CRC Article 6 recognizes every child's inherent right to life, survival, and development, which this commandment directly overrides.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prohibits the survival of individuals on the basis of their membership in a people defined by its religious practices; post-Enlightenment norms categorically reject religious identity as a basis for capital treatment of non-combatant populations.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition rules the commandment permanently inapplicable because the seven nations can no longer be identified after Sennacherib's population transfers (Mishnah Yadayim 4:4; Maimonides, Hilkhot Melakhim 5:4); the conflict is de jure, not currently actionable.