and when Yahweh your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them.
Not to show favor or mercy to idolaters
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תְחָנֵּם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מחמול כלל על עובדי ע"ז ומליפות דבר מכל מה שמיוחד להם. והוא אמרו לא תחנם ובאה הקבלה לא תתן להם חן. עד שהאיש העובד ע"ז יפה הצורה אסור לנו לומר זה יפה תאר כמו שהתבאר בגמרא דילן (ע"ז כ'). ובגמ' ירושלמי (ע"ז פ"א ה"ט) אמר לא תתן להם חן בלא תעשה. (ואתחנן, מדע הלכות ע"ז וחקות העכו"ם פ"י):
He prohibited us from at all pitying idolaters and from lauding anything particular to them. And that is His saying, "do not show them mercy (techonem)" (Deuteronomy 7:2). And the tradition comes [to teach]: Do not show them favor; to the point that it is forbidden for us to say, "This one has a nice form," when an idolator has a nice form - as is explained in our Gemara (Avodah Zarah 20a). And in the Gemara Yerushalmi (Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 1:9), it said, "You shall not show them favor, [involves] a negative commandment." (See Parashat Vaetchanan; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 10.)
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.
- Recorded as practiced today
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 Rejected
- 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)
- 1QS 1:1-11 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic separation ideology General dualistic separation paranesis (love sons of light, hate sons of darkness) paralleling the Deuteronomic exclusion ideology, not a direct exegesis of Deut 7:2
- CD 12:6-11 read it more strictly
Josephus
- Ant. 4.190-193 expanded it homiletically
The New Testament
- 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 reinterpreted it separation-from-unbelievers paranesis echoing the Deuteronomic separation ideology, redirected to cultic/moral company-keeping
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:51 carried a parallel
- Q 60:1 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.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties demand of exclusive loyalty and prohibition of alliance/sympathy with rival powers Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary ll. 162-301 (loyalty stipulations) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988), no. 6
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 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prohibits extending standard courtesies (gifts, land transactions, aesthetic praise) to persons on the basis of their religious practice; UDHR Article 7 guarantees equal protection of the law without discrimination on grounds of religion.
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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 26 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion and requires equal and effective protection against discrimination; the commandment mandates differential treatment of persons specifically because they practice a non-Israelite religion.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment imposes legally enforceable disadvantages — prohibition on receiving gifts, land, or favorable speech — solely because a person adheres to a non-Yahwistic religious system, directly penalizing religious identity in a manner incompatible with principles of religious freedom and pluralism.