He shall not profane his offspring among his people, for I am Yahweh who sanctifies him.’ ”
The High Priest shall not have sexual relations with a widow even without marriage
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא־יְחַלֵּל זַרְעוֹ בְּעַמָּיו כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה מְקַדְּשׁוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר כהן גדול שלא לבא על האלמנה אפילו בלא קדושין, והוא אמרו ולא יחלל זרעו בעמיו, ובאור זה שכהן הדיוט נאסרו עליו הנשואין כמו שאמרנו לא יקחו והוא איסור הנשואין אבל אינו לוקה עד שיבעול כמו שקדם באורו, אמנם אם בעל בלא קדושין אף על פי שזה אסור עליו ומוזהר ממנו ופסולה לכהונה אינו לוקה משום זה כי לא באה האזהרה מזה. אמנם כהן גדול הנה באר בו שני לאוין, האחד הוא לא יקחו שהוא איסור הנשואין, והשני ולא יחלל זרעו והוא איסור הבעילה אפילו בלא קדושין. ובגמרא קדושין (דף ע"ח) אמרו בכהן גדול באלמנה שאם בעל ולא קדש שלוקה מאי טעמא ולא יחלל אמר רחמנא והרי חלל. ושם אמרו כהן גדול באלמנה לוקה שתים לוקה משום לא יקח ולוקה משום לא יחלל, ואמנם נתיחד זה באלמנה מפני שהיא מיוחדת בלאו על כהן גדול, והיא כשרה לכהונה ובזאת הבעילה נפסלה לכהונה. ואולם גרושה זונה וחללה דינו בשלשתן כדין כהן הדיוט רוצה לומר שכל אחת ואחת פסולה לכהונה מתחלתה. (אמור, קדושה הלכות איסורי ביאה פי"ז י"ח י"ט):
He prohibited a high priest - that he not have sexual relations with a widow, even without marriage. And that is His saying, "And he shall not desecrate his seed among his people" (Leviticus 21:15). And its explanation is that an ordinary priest is forbidden to marry [various categories of women], as He said, "they shall not take" (Leviticus 21:7)" - and that is a prohibition of marriage. However he is not lashed until he has sexual relations, as we explained previously. Nevertheless, if he has sexual relations without marriage - even though it is forbidden, he is prohibited about her and he disqualifies her from the priesthood - he is not lashed on account of this, because the prohibition is not explicit here. But behold [in the case of] the high priest, two negative commandments are explicit: One is, "he shall not take" - which is the prohibition about marriage. And the second is, "And he shall not desecrate his seed" - and that is the prohibition about sexual relations even without marriage. And in the Gemara, Kiddushin (Kiddushin 78a), they said about a high priest with a widow, that if he has sexual relations and he did not marry, he is lashed: "What is the reason? The [Torah] said, 'And he shall not desecrate.' And behold, he desecrated." Indeed, this is limited to a widow because the negative commandment is specific to the high priest, whereas she is fit [to marry an ordinary priest] - but with this intercourse, he disqualifies her to the priesthood. However the law of a divorcee, a zonah and a desecrated woman is like the law of an ordinary priest - meaning to say, that each and every one [of these] is disqualified to the priesthood from the beginning. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Intercourse 17-19.)
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.
- 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 Binding
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.110-111 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.276-277 affirmed 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 Babylonian regulations governing the restricted marriage, inheritance, and reproductive conduct of dedicated cultic women (nadītu, šugītu), who could not freely bear children — a parallel concern with the status of religiously significant women and offspring, though in a different institutional configuration Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§178-184 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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.
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Article 16
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
CEDAW Article 16 requires equal rights for men and women in all matters relating to marriage and family; the commandment extends the widow exclusion from formal marriage to all sexual contact, imposing on the widow a permanent sexual-partner disqualification premised entirely on her prior marital status — a restriction with no male equivalent and grounded in a gendered purity logic.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The prohibition categorises a widow's sexual availability to the High Priest as inherently defiling to his priestly seed, attaching a negative symbolic quality to the widow's status that applies exclusively to women on account of prior marital association; this reflects a gender-asymmetric holiness calculus incompatible with post-Enlightenment equality norms.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prescribed penalty of thirty-nine lashes for violation 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 flogging sanction requires a functioning Sanhedrin, and this commandment is doubly inoperative because the office of High Priest ceased with the Temple's destruction; neither the prohibition's institutional subject nor its enforcement mechanism currently exists.