He must not go in to any dead body, or defile himself for his father or for his mother.
The High Priest shall not become ritually impure from any corpse, even close relatives
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעַל כָּל־נַפְשֹׁת מֵת לֹא יָבֹא לְאָבִיו וּלְאִמּוֹ לֹא יִטַּמָּא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר כהן הדיוט מהטמא לשאר מתים כי אם לקרוביו המבוארים בכתוב, והוא אמרו לנפש לא יטמא בעמיו ומי שעבר על לאו זה ונטמא לזולת ששה מתי מצוה חייב מלקות. וזאת האזהרה אין הנשים חייבות בה, ובאה הקבלה בני אהרן ולא בנות אהרן. (אמור אל הכהנים, הלכות אבל פ"ג):
That He prohibited an ordinary priest from becoming impure for the dead, other then for his relatives that are enumerated in Scripture. And that is His saying, "Let him not make himself impure with the dead among his people" (Leviticus 21:1). And one who transgresses this and becomes impure for one besides the six commanded [relatives] is liable for lashes. And women are not obligated in this commandment - the tradition (Sifra, Emor, Section 1:1) comes [to teach]: "'The sons of Aharon,' and not the daughters of Aharon." (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 Not binding
- 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 1.113-115 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.276 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.
- hittite instructions cultic personnel required to maintain ritual purity and undergo purification before resuming temple service, including avoidance of impurity sources, though without the Israelite prohibition's absolute and permanent exclusion of familial corpse exceptions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Instructions for Temple Officials (CTH 264) Collins, in Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture vol. 1 (Brill, 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.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Violation carries thirty-nine lashes; no contemporary legal system imposes corporal punishment on a person for contracting ritual impurity through proximity to a deceased relative, including one's own parents.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; inflicting lashes for attending to a deceased family member's burial falls within that prohibition.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
The prohibition is doubly inoperative: malkot requires a functioning Sanhedrin, and the commandment's full practical operation presupposes a functioning Temple service; both preconditions for enforcement are absent since 70 CE.