“ ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife. It is your brother’s nakedness.
Not to have sexual relations with one's brother's wife (sister-in-law), except in levirate marriage
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עֶרְוַת אֵשֶׁת־אָחִיךָ לֹא תְגַלֵּה עֶרְוַת אָחִיךָ הִוא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מגלות ערות אשת האח. והוא אמרו יתעלה ערות אשת אחיך לא תגלה. והעובר על לאו זה בכרת אם היה מזיד, ואם היה שוגג יקריב חטאת קבועה:
He prohibited us from sexual intercourse with the wife of the brother. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "The nakedness of your brother's wife you shall not uncover" (Leviticus 18:16). And one who transgresses this negative commandment is [punished] by excision if it was volitional. But [if] inadvertent, he must sacrifice a fixed sin-offering.
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 Not binding
- 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: forbidden degrees argument (primarily uncle niece); does not directly address the brother's wife clause
- 11QTa (11Q19) 66 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed (reworks Lev 18 incest provisions within the forbidden degrees legislation)
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 85:5 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.12-28 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.274-275 affirmed it
- Ant. 18.136 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 6:17-18 affirmed it John the Baptist condemns Herod Antipas for marrying Herodias, the wife of his living brother Philip — the precise Lev 18:16 case
- Matthew 22:24-28 carried a parallel Sadducees' levirate scenario presupposes the Deut 25 exception
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.61-62 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:23 carried a parallel, with divergence
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 prohibition of sex with a brother's wife during the brother's lifetime (the brother's-wife sub-clause within §195, per Hoffner's a/b/c subdivisions) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §195a Hoffner, Laws of the Hittites (1997); Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws successive marriage of a deceased man's widow to his brother/father within the household, read by some scholars as a levirate-type disposition Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §193 Hoffner, Laws of the Hittites (1997); Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws levirate-type disposition of a widow within the husband's household Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §33 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.