“ ‘All the days that he separates himself to Yahweh he shall not go near a dead body.
A nazirite shall not enter a tent or building containing a dead body
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כֹּל יְמֵי הַזִּירוֹ לַיהוָה עַל-נֶפֶשׁ מֵת לֹא יָבֹא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר הנזיר מלהטמא למת. והוא אמרו לאביו ולאמו לא יטמא, וכשנטמא בין בטומאה שמגלח עליה בין שאינו מגלח עליה לוקה. (נשא את ראש, הפלאה הלכות נזירות פרק א'):
He prohibited the nazirite from becoming impure with a corpse. And that is His saying, "He shall not make himself impure for his father, or for his mother" (Numbers 6:7). And if he became impure - whether with an impurity for which he must shave or whether [with one] for which he must not shave - he is lashed. (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Nazariteship 1.)
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
- A sin-offering (ḥatat)
- A burnt-offering (olah)
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 Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not 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)
- Temple Scroll (11Q19) and CD nazirite-related purity material; specific corpse-tent-impurity application to the nazirite is not securely attested in a single identified fragment The catalog describes this reception as: uncertain attestation
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.247-254 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.72 affirmed it Josephus paraphrases the nazirite regulations (hair-cutting and offerings) in his rewriting of the Mosaic law, presupposing the vow's purity framework.
The New Testament
- Acts 21:23-24 affirmed it Paul finances four men under a nazirite vow and undergoes purification rites with them in the Temple, presupposing the corpse-/purity-avoidance framework of the vow.
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 a direct contradiction.
Rambam codifies lashes for deliberately entering a structure containing a corpse while under a nazirite vow; modern proportionality principles preclude corporal punishment for entering a building based on its contents, even where a religious purity obligation applies.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Post-Enlightenment penal codes do not criminalize spatial proximity to a corpse on the basis of a religious purity vow, and flogging is not a permissible sanction in contemporary legal systems for any ritual-purity infraction.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin in the Second Temple era; the malkot sanction for nazirite ohel violations is de jure but not de facto enforced.