and shall tell them, “Hear, Israel, you draw near today to battle against your enemies. Don’t let your heart faint! Don’t be afraid, nor tremble, neither be scared of them;
Not to panic or retreat in battle from before the enemy
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַל־יֵרַ֣ךְ לְבַבְכֶ֗ם אַל־תִּֽירְא֧וּ וְאַֽל־תַּחְפְּז֛וּ וְאַל־תַּֽעַרְצ֖וּ מִפְּנֵיהֶֽם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מלירא מהאויבים בעת המלחמה ושלא נברח מפניהם, אבל חובה עלינו להתגבר ולעמוד ולחזק כנגד העם האחר וכל מי שיסוג אחור ויברח כבר עבר על לא תעשה. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תערוץ מפניהם, ונכפלה זאת האזהרה ואמר לא תיראום, ונכפל הצווי בזה הענין גם כן שלא יברחו ושלא ישובו אחור בעת המלחמה, כי בענין זה אפשר לקיים אמונת האמת. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשמיני מסוטה. (והיה עקב, מלכים פ"ז):
That He prohibited us from being afraid of the enemies during the time of war, and that we not run away from them. Rather, it is an obligation upon us to be resilient and to stand firm and be strong against the other people. And anyone who retreats and runs away has already transgressed this negative commandment. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You shalt not be terrified by them" (Deuteronomy 7:21). And this prohibition was repeated when He said, "Do not fear them" (Deuteronomy 3:22). And this command was repeated frequently - not to run away and not to retreat during the time of war - since it is possible to confirm the true faith with this matter. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the eighth [chapter] of Sotah. (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 7.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- 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) 10:2-8 expanded it homiletically
- 1QM 15:6-9 expanded it homiletically
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §192 The catalog describes this reception as: midrashic parsing
Josephus
- Ant. 4.296-301 rationalized it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 8:15-16 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.
- code of hammurabi §26 penalizes a redûm/bâʾirum who refuses a royal military campaign; §§33-34 penalize an officer who defrauds or oppresses a subordinate soldier — military-obligation provisions rather than direct parallels to a prohibition on battlefield fear Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §26 (with §§33-34) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties oath-bound obligation to remain loyal and not abandon one's lord, enforced by curses against breach Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary SAA 2 no. 6, loyalty stipulations (lines 108ff.) with the concluding curse section Parpola & 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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UDHR Articles 18–19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
Maimonides (Hilkhot Melakhim 7:15) extends the prohibition to the inner psychological state of fear itself, penalizing a soldier for allowing dread to dominate his thinking — a regulation of inner mental states that conflicts with the principle that conscience and thought cannot be subject to legal sanction.