It shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go where she desires; but you shall not sell her at all for money. You shall not deal with her as a slave, because you have humbled her.
Not to sell a beautiful captive woman
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהָיָה אִם־לֹא חָפַצְתָּ בָּהּ וְשִׁלַּחְתָּהּ לְנַפְשָׁהּ וּמָכֹר לֹא־תִמְכְּרֶנָּה בַּכָּסֶף לֹא־תִתְעַמֵּר בָּהּ תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנִּיתָהּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו שלא למכור אשת יפת תואר אחר שבא עליה פעם אחת בבית אחר לקיחת העיר, ואם מכרה לוקה כמו שהתבאר במקומו, והוא אמרו והיה אם לא חפצתה בה וגו' ומכור לא תמכרנה בכסף. (כי תצא, הלכות מלכים פ"ח):
That He prohibited us - that we not sell a [captive] woman of beautiful form (yefat toar), after one had sexual intercourse with her once, after the capture of the city. And if he sells her, he is lashed, as is explained in its place. And that is His saying, "And it shall be that if you do not desire her, etc., but to sell; you may not sell her for money" (Deuteronomy 21:14). (See Parashat Ki Tetzeh; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 8.)
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 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
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Undetermined
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 Virtutibus 111-115 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.257-259 rationalized 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.
- middle assyrian laws regulation of status and disposition of dependent/captive women without post-coital protective release Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast A §§40-41 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi CH §119 allows a debtor to sell his slave-woman to redeem a debt — no lifetime prohibition on sale of a sexually-used woman (CH §171 is adjacent but concerns posthumous manumission of a slave-woman and her children, not lifetime sale) Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §119 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (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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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment carries a punishment of thirty-nine lashes (malkot) for selling the captive woman; post-Enlightenment penal codes universally prohibit judicial corporal punishment as a sanction for commercial offenses.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; judicially administered flogging is categorized as degrading punishment under authoritative treaty-body interpretation.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital and corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin following the destruction of the Second Temple; the malkot sanction exists de jure but has not been enforced for approximately two millennia.