“ ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter, or of your daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness; for theirs is your own nakedness.
Not to have sexual relations with one's son's daughter
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עֶרְוַת בַּת־בִּנְךָ אוֹ בַת־בִּתְּךָ לֹא תְגַלֶּה עֶרְוָתָן כִּי עֶרְוָתְךָ הֵנָּה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מגלות ערות בת הבן. והוא אמרו ערות בת בנך לא תגלה:
He prohibited us from sexual intercourse with the daughter of the son. And that is His saying, "The nakedness of your son's daughter [...] you shall not uncover" (Leviticus 18:10).
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
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
- Karet — being 'cut off'
Ritual remedy
- A sin-offering (ḥatat)
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 5:7-11 The catalog describes this reception as: stringent reinterpretation (extends Lev 18 incest logic analogically to niece marriage; not granddaughter specific)
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.12-28 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized (general incest rationalization; not granddaughter specific)
Josephus
- Ant. 3.274-275 (cf. Contra Apionem 2.199-201) The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed (general affirmation of the Mosaic sexual/incest legislation; not granddaughter specific)
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:23 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel (general incest prohibition catalogue; does not explicitly name granddaughters)
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.
- hittite laws incest provisions covering parent-child, stepmother, and in-law configurations; grandparent-grandchild not explicitly enumerated Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §189 (parent-child); §190 (stepmother); §§195a-c (brother's wife, stepdaughter, wife's sister); no explicit grandparent-grandchild clause 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.