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 eunuch shall not marry an Israelite woman
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יָבֹא פְצוּעַ־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 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
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, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding textualist
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)
- 1QSa (1Q28a) 2:3-10 The catalog describes this reception as: analogous exclusion Excludes those with bodily blemishes/defects from the eschatological assembly; generalizes the bodily-completeness logic rather than reinterpreting the eunuch prohibition specifically
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 86:3 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.290-291 rationalized it Paraphrases the prohibition on emasculation and exclusion of the castrated, framing it as preservation of procreative capacity
The New Testament
- Acts 8:26-40 treated it as abrogated Ethiopian eunuch's baptism read as fulfilling Isa 56 and reversing the Deuteronomic exclusion
- Matthew 19:12 reinterpreted it Jesus' saying on eunuchs 'for the kingdom of heaven' valorizes a category the law excludes
The Church Fathers
- Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 3.12.8 The catalog describes this reception as: cited Invokes the Philip-and-eunuch episode (Acts 8) as evidence of apostolic mission rather than developing a typology of the Deuteronomic exclusion
- Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam (on Isa 56:3-5) read it spiritually
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.
- neo assyrian royal inscriptions social status of the ša rēši / castrated palace official, attested in administrative and royal sources rather than a law collection Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast No legal-collection section exists; the ša rēši (castrated palace official) class is attested only in administrative and royal records Not present in Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997); documented in Neo-Assyrian administrative corpora
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 eunuchs from marrying Israelite women on account of their physical or medical 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 any grounds including physical status; the marriage restriction targeting castrated men imposes a perpetual civil disability on the basis of a bodily condition without legitimate and proportionate justification under international human rights standards.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prescribed penalty of thirty-nine lashes for violating the restriction employs corporal punishment, which modern criminal law universally prohibits as cruel and degrading.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; flogging as the enforcement mechanism constitutes 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 lapsed with the Second Temple's destruction; enforcement of the corporal penalty is suspended in practice, though the marriage restriction itself remains formally operative in Orthodox halakhah.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #507 — Structural duplicate of #507 — both cite Rambam SHM Negative 360 (Deuteronomy 23:2) with identical halakhic content. #507 is the canonical placement, integrated into the dataset's Chinukh-ordered marriage-law cluster (positive/negative pairings around #469–#483). #510–#515 form an isolated SHM-ordered run inserted into an otherwise Chinukh-ordered span. See task #93..