There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
Not to wrong or oppress an escaped slave who has come to the land of Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עִמְּךָ יֵשֵׁב בְּקִרְבְּךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַר בְּאַחַד שְׁעָרֶיךָ בַּטּוֹב לוֹ לֹא תּוֹנֶנּוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו גם כן מאונאת העבד הבורח אליו. והוא אמרו יתעלה עמך ישב בקרבך בטוב לו לא תוננו. ולשון ספרי לא תוננו זו אונאת דברים, כי כמו שהזהיר יתעלה לאו לאונאת הגר לחולשתו וגנותו הוסיף גם כן לאו שלישי באונאת העבד שהוא יותר חלוש הנפש ושפל יותר מן הגר שלא תאמר זה העבד לא יתבייש מאונאת דברים. ומבואר הוא שזה העבד שדבר בו הכתוב ודין הגר שהזהיר מאונאתו אמנם הם קבלו התורה על עצמם, והם גרי צדק. (שם, שם):
That He also prohibited us from wronging a slave that runs away to us. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "With you shall he dwell among you [...], where it is good for him; you shall not wrong him" (Deuteronomy 23:17). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 259:7) is, "'You shall not wrong him' - that is wronging of words." For just as as He, may He be exalted, prohibited wronging the convert [with] a negative commandment, due to his weakness and disgrace; so did He also add a third negative commandment about the wronging of a slave - for he is weaker and more lowly than the convert - such that you not say, "This slave will not be shamed by wronging of words." And it is clear that this slave that Scripture is speaking about and the convert, the wronging of which the law prohibited, are in fact those that took [observance of] the Torah upon themselves. And these are the righteous converts (gerei tsedek). (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Slaves 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 prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Binding in the land of Israel
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Position not stated
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 124 carried a parallel Philo, in his survey of humane Mosaic legislation (De Virtutibus 124, the conventionally cited locus), commends kindly treatment of fugitive slaves; direct dependence on Deut 23:16-17 is plausible but not explicit.
The New Testament
- Philemon 1:10-18 carried a parallel Paul's intercession for the fugitive slave Onesimus engages the asylum/return tension without invoking Deut 23:16-17 directly; relationship debated.
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 criminalization of harboring/aiding fugitive slaves; death penalty for sheltering Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§15-20 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws rewards and obligations for return of fugitive slaves Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§22-24 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna penalties for harboring/detaining a fugitive slave Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§49-50 Roth, Law Collections 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.