The children of the third generation who are born to them may enter into Yahweh’s assembly.
Not to reject an Egyptian who seeks to convert (after the third generation)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תְתַעֵב מִצְרִי כִּי־גֵר הָיִיתָ בְאַרְצוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו שלא להרחיק המצרים ולתעב את חתנותם אחר הכנסם בדת. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תתעב מצרי דור שלישי וגו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו ומצות אדומי בשמיני ביבמות וסוף קדושין. (כי תצא למלחמה, קדושה הלכות איסורי ביאה שם):
That He prohibited us - not to distance the Egyptians and to abhor marriage to them, after they have entered the [Jewish] religion. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "you shall not abhor an Egyptian [... in] the third generation" (Deuteronomy 23:8-9). And the regulations of this commandment and the commandment about the Edomite have already been explained in the eighth [chapter] of Yevamot and at the end of Kiddushin. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Sexual Intercourse 12.)
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 Not binding
- Conservative Not binding
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §252 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 106-108 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized ethical
Josephus
- Ant. 4.225 reinterpreted it
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.
Even the lenient Egyptian provision imposes a three-generation waiting period for community admission based solely on national origin; ICCPR Article 26 prohibits discrimination on grounds of national or social origin, and graded inclusion by ethnic descent — however generous in its historical context — constitutes origin-based differentiation inconsistent with equal-treatment norms.