There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who tells fortunes, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer,
Not to practice enchantment or sorcery
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יִמָּצֵא בְךָ ... וּמְכַשֵּׁף
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהיות חובר, והוא שיאמרו מאמרים שיחשבו שיועילו לזה. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא ימצא בך וגו' וחובר חבר. ולשון ספרי וחובר חבר אחד חובר את העקרב כלומר מי שיאמר עליהם מאמרים ולא ינשכהו לפי מחשבתו, או יאמר על מקום נשיכתם כדי שינוח הכאב, והעובר על לאו זה לוקה. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשביעי משבת. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from being a charmer - and that is saying things that they think will be effective for this. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Let no one be found among you ... Or a charmer" (Deuteronomy 18:10-11). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 172:1) is, "'Or a charmer' - whether he charms [snakes or] scorpions." Meaning that he says things to them, and they do not [sting] him - according to his thinking - or he says [them] over the place of the sting, so that the pain subside. And one who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment have been explained in the seventh [chapter] of Shabbat. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 11.)
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
- Death by stoning (sekilah)
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QPsAp-a (11Q11) The catalog describes this reception as: reflected
Rabbinic aggadah
- Exodus Rabbah 9:6 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.93-99 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Galatians 5:20 affirmed it pharmakeia listed among the 'works of the flesh' excluded from the kingdom
- Revelation 21:8 affirmed it pharmakoi consigned to the lake of fire
- Acts 8:9-24 rejected it polemically Simon Magus narrative condemning the trade in supernatural power
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, De Civitate Dei 8.19 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:102 carried a parallel
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 river ordeal for accusations of sorcery (kišpū) Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §2 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws death penalty for one proven to have prepared/used magical preparations (kišpū) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Tablet A §47 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws regulation of sorcery/magical purification and ritual acts as punishable offenses Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§44b, 111, 170 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites (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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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes death by stoning for practicing sorcery — a religiously inflected set of ritual techniques; post-Enlightenment and international norms hold that no state or religious authority may impose capital punishment for the practice of religious or magical arts.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 18 protects freedom to manifest religion or belief in practice and observance; prescribing capital punishment for performing magical or ritual acts that constitute a practitioner's religious practice directly contradicts this right.
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UDHR Article 19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
UDHR Article 19 protects freedom of expression; ritual incantation and performative magic as forms of symbolic expression — divorced from any demonstrable harm — are a mode of expression whose prohibition by capital sanction conflicts with that article.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality precludes capital punishment for non-violent ritual practices; stoning for performing an incantation or preparing a magical substance is categorically disproportionate under any post-Enlightenment penal framework.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6(1) protects the right to life; mandatory capital punishment for sorcery is incompatible with the article's requirement that deprivation of life be reserved for only the most serious crimes and, in abolitionist systems, prohibited entirely.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin in the Second Temple era; the stoning sanction is de jure but not de facto enforced.