“He who sacrifices to any god, except to Yahweh only, shall be utterly destroyed.
Not to wrong a stranger in financial matters
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְגֵר לֹא תוֹנֶה וְלֹא תִלְחָצֶנּוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהונות גר צדק ומהזיקו במקח וממכר. והוא אמרו ולא תלחצנו. ולשון מכילתא לא תלחצנו בממון. וכבר התבאר בגמרא מציעא (נ"ט:) שהמאנה את הגר עובר משום לא תונו איש את אחיו ומשום גר לא תונו והלוחצו עובר משום לא תלחצנו מוסף על האזהרה שהוא נכלל עם ישראל רוצה לומר אונאת ממון. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from wronging the convert and causing him damage in buying and selling. And that is His saying, "and you shall not oppress him" (Exodus 22:20). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 22:20:1) is,"'You shall not oppress him,' is with money." And it has already been explained in the Gemara, Metzia (Bava Metzia 59b), that one who wrongs the convert transgresses on account of, "you shall not wrong your brother" (Leviticus 25:14), and on account of, "You shall not wrong a convert"; and one who oppresses him, transgresses on account of, "and you shall not oppress him," in addition to the prohibition in which he is included with all of Israel - meaning to say, financial wrong. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sales 14.)
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
- A monetary penalty
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
- Restitution (tashlumin)
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
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin (Mishpatim) 18 expanded it homiletically
- Bava Metzia 59b The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic exegetical derivation
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.51-53 expanded it homiletically
- De Virtutibus 102-104 expanded it homiletically
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.
- egyptian negative confession ethical disavowal of commercial fraud and exploitation of the weak Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Declarations of Innocence ('I have not defrauded / I have not falsified the balance') Allen, The Book of the Dead (1974); Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (rev. ed.)
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.