If she doesn’t please her master, who has married her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt deceitfully with her.
A Hebrew bondwoman betrothed to her master or his son shall follow the prescribed laws
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אִם־רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר־[לֹא Ketiv / לוֹ Qere] יְעָדָהּ וְהֶפְדָּהּ לְעַם נָכְרִי לֹא־יִמְשֹׁל לְמָכְרָהּ בְּבִגְדוֹ־בָהּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לישא אמה העבריה אדוניה שקנה אותה או בנו וזו היא מצות יעוד קודמת למצות פדיה באמרו אשר לא יעדה והפדה. ודע שדין עבד עברי ודין אמה העבריה אינו נוהג אלא בזמן שהיובל נוהג. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ד ממסכת קדושין.
That is that He commanded us that the master who acquired a Hebrew (Jewish) maidservant marry her - [he] or his son. And that is the commandment of designation [that] has precedence over the commandment of redemption, by His saying, "who designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed" (Exodus 21:8). But you should know that the law of a Hebrew slave and a Hebrew maidservant are only practiced at the time that the Jubilee is practiced. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 4 of Tractate Kiddushin.
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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 Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Spec. Leg. 2.79-85 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.273 (cited within Josephus' broader rephrasing of Hebrew servitude and release laws; precise verse correspondence uncertain) rationalized it
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 debt-servitude and sale of family members into bondage with release provisions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§117-119 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi status and treatment of a slave-woman given to the master for childbearing alongside the principal wife Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§146-147 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of lipit ishtar inheritance and status of the children of a slave-woman versus those of a wife Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§24-25 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 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.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The institution of the amah ivriyah permits a father to sell his minor daughter into a household as a prospective wife or concubine; CEDAW Article 6 requires states to take measures to suppress all forms of trafficking in women and exploitation of prostitution, with which the commercially arranged sexual bondage of a girl at her father's discretion directly conflicts.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The law creates a gendered asymmetry by which fathers may sell daughters into bonded domestic-sexual arrangements unavailable for sons, treating female persons as assets disposable at male-head-of-household discretion.
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Article 36
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The CRC Article 36 protects children from all forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspect of their welfare; the sale of a girl by her father into a household for eventual designation as wife or concubine constitutes child exploitation incompatible with that protection.
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Article 23
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(3) guarantees that no marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses; the amah ivriyah's designation (yi'ud) as wife or concubine at the master's unilateral discretion — without her consent as the primary operative consideration — directly contradicts this requirement.