Yahweh said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, ‘A priest shall not defile himself for the dead among his people,
A regular priest shall not become impure by contact with a corpse other than his seven close relatives
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא־יִטַּמָּא בְּעַמָּיו
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.
- 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 Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding (Karaite reading of plain text)
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)
- CD; Temple Scroll (11QT) priestly purity sections read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 26:5 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.113-116 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.277 The catalog describes this reception as: restated (general priestly purity context)
The New Testament
- Luke 10:31-32 The catalog describes this reception as: alluded (traditional reading) The priest and Levite passing by in the Good Samaritan parable have traditionally been read against the backdrop of corpse-avoidance concerns, though the text itself gives no explicit purity rationale.
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 purity and purify before returning to sanctuary service; the Hittite system emphasizes purification protocols whereas the Israelite system imposes an avoidance-based prohibition on corpse contact with enumerated familial exceptions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Instructions for Temple Officials (CTH 264) McMahon, in Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture vol. 1; cf. J. Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions (SBL, 2013)
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic funerary texts presuppose a cultural world in which priestly/cultic figures regularly interact with the dead in mortuary-cult contexts; the Israelite restriction on ordinary priests distances the Yahwistic cult from this death-adjacent role Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.17–1.19 (Aqhat epic: burial obligations and the fate of the dead) Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (Brill, 1994, 2009); 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 priestly corpse-avoidance prohibition carries thirty-nine lashes; no contemporary legal system imposes corporal punishment for entering a space occupied by a deceased person outside of one's enumerated kin.
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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 an infraction of religious purity rules falls within that prohibition.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Malkot requires a functioning Sanhedrin, which lapsed after 70 CE; the lashes sanction is de facto suspended, though the corpse-avoidance practice continues in Orthodox communities (e.g., kohanim avoiding cemeteries).