He must not go in to any dead body, or defile himself for his father or for his mother.
The High Priest shall not enter a place where there is a dead body
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעַל כָּל־נַפְשֹׁת מֵת לֹא יָבֹא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר כהן גדול מהכנס עם מת תחת תקרה ואפילו לקרוביו. והוא אמרו ועל כל נפשות מת לא יבא. וכל זמן שיטמא אפילו לאביו ולאמו לוקה. (שם, שם):
He prohibited a high priest from entering under a roof together with a dead body, even for his relatives. And that is His saying, "And adjacent to any dead body he shall not enter" (Leviticus 21:11). And anytime he renders himself impure - even for his father or for his mother - he is lashed. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Mourning 3.)
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 As the catalog records it: binding in principle (inapplicable absent Temple/High Priest)
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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 48-51 read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.113-116 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.276-277 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed (general priestly purity context, corpse rule treated obliquely)
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 instructions regulations governing the ritual purity of cultic personnel, including avoidance of impurity sources and purification before cultic service Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Instructions to Priests and Temple Officials (CTH 264) Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts (SBL, 2013)
- ugaritic texts contrast: Ugaritic texts attest participation in death-adjacent commensality (marziḥu) and royal funerary cult, whereas the Israelite High Priest must be radically insulated from any contact with death Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.114 (marziḥu/divine banquet); 1.161 (royal funerary ritual) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
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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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Violation of the High Priest's spatial corpse-proximity prohibition carries thirty-nine lashes; no contemporary legal system imposes corporal punishment for the administrative infraction of entering a room containing a deceased person.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; thirty-nine lashes for proximity to a corpse falls within that prohibition.
-
rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
The prohibition is doubly inoperative: malkot requires a functioning Sanhedrin (lapsed after 70 CE), and the High Priest's office itself requires a standing Temple; both preconditions for enforcement are absent.