then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring her offering for her: one tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall pour no oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, for it is a meal offering of jealousy, a meal offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to memory.
Not to put frankincense on the sotah offering
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יִצֹק עָלָיו שֶׁמֶן וְלֹא־יִתֵּן עָלָיו לְבֹנָה כִּי־מִנְחַת קְנָאֹת הוּא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהשים לבונה במנחת סוטה. והוא אמרו ולא יתן עליה לבונה. ולשון ספרי מגיד שאם נתן עובר בלא תעשה כמו שעובר על שמנו כך עובר על לבונתו, לפיכך מי שעבר על לאו זה לוקה. ובמכילתא לא יצוק עליה שמן ולא יתן עליה לבונה מגיד שהן שתי אזהרות. (שם שם):
He prohibited us from putting frankincense into the meal-offering of a sotah (suspected adulteress). And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and no frankincense shall be placed on it" (Numbers 5:15). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Bamidbar 8:1) is, "[It] tells that if one placed [it], he transgresses a negative commandment. Just as he transgresses for its oil, so too does he transgress for its frankincense." Hence one who transgressed this negative commandment is lashed. And in the Mekhilta: "'And he shall not pour oil upon it, and no frankincense shall be placed on it' - [it] tells that they are two prohibitions." (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Woman Suspected of Infidelity 3.)
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 ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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 As the catalog records it: binding in principle (inoperative pending Temple)
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- 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 Specialibus Legibus 3.52-62 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.270-273 reinterpreted 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 suspected-adultery resolved by oath/river ordeal Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§131-132 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws accusation of wifely infidelity adjudicated by ordeal/oath Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §§17-18 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.