You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you lived as a foreigner in his land.
Not to make peace with the nations of Ammon and Moab
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִדְרֹשׁ שְׁלֹמָם וְטֹבָתָם כָּל־יָמֶיךָ לְעוֹלָם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מהשלים עם עמון ומואב לעולם, וזה שהאל יתעלה כבר צונו כשנבוא להלחם אל עיר שנשאל השלום קודם המלחמה ושנבקש מהם שישלימו עמנו ואם מסרו העיר בידינו אסור להלחם עמהם ולהרגם כמו שבארנו במצוה ק"צ ממצות עשה, חוץ מעמון ומואב שלא נתנהג עמהם המנהג הזה אבל הזהירנו האל יתעלה מקרוא להם לשלום ולבקש להם לשלום, וזהו אמרו יתעלה לא תדרוש שלומם וטובתם. ולשון ספרי מכלל שנאמר כי תקרב אל עיר לצור עליה יכול אף כאן תלמוד לומר לא תדרוש שלומם וטובתם כל ימיך לעולם. (שם, מלכים פ"ו):
That He prohibited us from ever making peace with Ammon and Moab. And that is since God, may He be exalted, already commanded us that when we come to wage war with a city, we ask for peace before the war and request from them that they make peace with us. And if [in response,] they give the city over into our hands, it is forbidden for us to wage war against them and to kill them - as we explained in Commandment 190 of the Positive Commandments. [However, this is] except for Ammon and Moab, as we do not follow this practice with them. Rather God, may He exalted, has prohibited us from calling out to them for peace and to seek peace with them. And this is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity" (Deuteronomy 23:7). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 255:1) is, "It is implied from its being stated, 'When you near a city to do battle against it, [you shall call out to it for peace,' that] maybe the same should be done here. [Hence] we learn to say, 'You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all the days of your life forever." (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 6.)
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.
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 Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Binding in principle
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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 treaty loyalty-oath clauses governing vassal-to-suzerain obligations and prohibited foreign contacts Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty, loyalty-oath stipulations (SAA 2 no. 6) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- hittite vassal treaties vassal treaty clauses prohibiting the vassal from seeking alliances with, or good relations toward, powers hostile to the suzerain — the closest ANE structural parallel to the Deuteronomic prohibition on seeking Ammonite-Moabite peace Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary Stipulations sections of Hittite suzerainty treaties (e.g., treaty of Mursili II with Duppi-Teshub) Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
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 26
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 26 prohibits discrimination on grounds of national or social origin; the commandment bars Israel from initiating any peaceful diplomatic relations with Ammon and Moab permanently, on the basis of the nations' ethnic identity and the ancestral conduct of their forebears — a policy of perpetual national-origin-based exclusion from diplomatic intercourse.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits seeking peace or welfare with specific nations in perpetuity on grounds of their ethnic-historical identity, mandating a religiously derived posture of permanent enmity that is irreconcilable with secular-democratic principles of national self-determination and universally available diplomatic relations.