A person born of a forbidden union shall not enter into Yahweh’s assembly; even to the tenth generation shall no one of his enter into Yahweh’s assembly.
A man castrated by crushing, cutting, or other means shall not marry into the congregation of Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יָבֹא פְצֽוּעַ־דַּכָּא וּכְרוּת שָׁפְכָה בִּקְהַל יְהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מי שנפסדו ממנו כלי המשגל שאי אפשר לו שיוליד שלא לבא על בת ישראל. והוא אמרו לא יבא פצוע דכה וגו'. וכל זמן שבעל בת ישראל אחר קדושין לוקה. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשמיני מיבמות. (שם, קדושה הלכות איסורי ביאה פט"ז):
He prohibited one whose sexual organs have been destroyed - such that it is impossible for him to father children - to have sexual intercourse with an Israelite. And that is His saying, "No one whose testes are crushed may enter, etc." (Deuteronomy 23:2). And each time he has sexual intercourse [with his wife] after marriage, he is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment have been explained in the eighth [chapter] of Yevamot. (See Parashat Ki Tetzeh; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Intercourse 7.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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
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 Binding
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- 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)
- 4QMMT B 39-49 (cf. exclusion catalogue concerning entry into the qahal/temple) read it more strictly
- 1QSa (1Q28a) 2:3-9 read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.324-325 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.290-291 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Acts 8:26-40 reinterpreted it Ethiopian eunuch's baptism narrated without explicit comment on Deut 23:2; commonly read by interpreters as fulfilling Isa 56 and inferentially reversing the Deuteronomic bar, though the text does not itself cite or abrogate the law
- Matthew 19:12 reinterpreted it Jesus' saying on 'eunuchs for the kingdom' reframes the category positively
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Commentary on Matthew 15.1-5 (on Matt 19:12) read it allegorically
- Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.8 (on Origen's self-castration) rejected it polemically
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.
- middle assyrian laws judicial castration as a punishment for adultery — attesting castration as an institutionalized practice in the Assyrian legal world, whereas Israelite law excludes the castrated man from the assembly rather than prescribing castration as punishment Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast A §15 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- middle assyrian laws talionic penalty for male same-sex intercourse in which the offender is himself penetrated and made a eunuch (turned into a ša rēši); the precise nature of the penalty — reciprocal sodomy and/or actual castration — is debated by scholars, but the text attests the Assyrian judicial use of sexual/genital mutilation as punishment Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast A §20 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties institutional use of castrated men (ša rēši) as palace officials in the Neo-Assyrian imperial administration — the foreign practice implicitly rejected by the Deuteronomic bodily-integrity ideal Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast extralegal attestations of ša rēši (castrated palace official) institution Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
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 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 7 guarantees equality before the law without discrimination; the permanent exclusion of men with genital injury from the marital congregation on account of a physical condition constitutes discrimination in civil status based on bodily characteristic, directly contradicting the equality principle.
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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 26 prohibits discrimination on the basis of any status including 'other status,' which UN treaty bodies have interpreted to include disability and physical condition; the permanent marriage restriction targeting men with castration injuries imposes a civil disability on the basis of bodily characteristic without legitimate and proportionate justification.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes lashes as the penalty for violation; post-Enlightenment criminal law universally prohibits corporal punishment as degrading, making the enforcement mechanism incompatible with contemporary penal standards.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; flogging as the prescribed sanction for marrying despite this disability constitutes cruel and degrading punishment under international human rights standards.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the lashes sanction requires a functioning Sanhedrin, which has been inoperative since the Second Temple era; the enforcement mechanism is thus suspended in practice, though the de jure norm remains.