The officers shall speak to the people, saying, “What man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. What man is there who has planted a vineyard, and has not used its fruit? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man use its fruit. What man is there who has pledged to be married to a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.”
Those newly married, who have planted a vineyard, or built a house are exempt from war in the first year
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
מִי־הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר בָּנָה בַיִת־חָדָשׁ וְלֹא חֲנָכוֹ יֵלֵךְ וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ פֶּן־יָמוּת בַּמִּלְחָמָה וְאִישׁ אַחֵר יַחְנְכֶנּוּ
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
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
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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) col. 7 The catalog describes this reception as: partial parallel 1QM 7 excludes the ritually impure, the physically blemished, and those outside the eligible age-range from the eschatological war camp; this is a purity/fitness exclusion distinct from the Deuteronomic personal-circumstance exemptions, which 1QM does not reproduce.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §§192-197 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 22-50 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.298-299 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 14:18-20 The catalog describes this reception as: possible allusion The parable of the great banquet, where invitees excuse themselves on grounds of a newly bought field, oxen, and a new marriage, has been proposed by some scholars as a possible allusion to the Deuteronomic exemption triad used as a literary template for excuse-making; the connection is a minority conjecture and is not widely accepted.
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 royal inscriptions Neo-Assyrian military and administrative sources reflect compulsory levy without recorded personal-circumstance exemptions (newly built house, planted vineyard, betrothed wife), offering a structural contrast to the Deuteronomic exemption framework Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast General comparative observation; no specific conscription-exemption text attested cf. Trimm, Fighting for the King and the Gods (SBL Press, 2017)
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.