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 witchcraft or cast spells
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יִמָּצֵא בְךָ ... מְכַשֵּׁף
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
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sanhedrin 68a (R. Eliezer cucumber narrative) expanded it homiletically
- Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 44 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.93-103 rationalized it treats pharmakeia/poisoning, condemning sorcerers who corrupt with drugs and incantations
The New Testament
- Galatians 5:20 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed prohibition pharmakeia listed among 'works of the flesh'
- Revelation 21:8 The catalog describes this reception as: affirmed prohibition sorcerers (pharmakoi) consigned to the lake of fire
- Acts 8:9-24 rejected it polemically Simon Magus narrative dramatizing rejection of magic
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 2.20-24 rejected it polemically
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 sorcery accusation; institutional regulation of magic Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §2 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws death penalty for one who makes magical preparations (kishpū) and is convicted Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §47 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws penalization of magic-adjacent ritual act (killing a snake while pronouncing another person's name) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §170 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (1997)
- code of hammurabi river ordeal prescribed for adjudicating sorcery (kashshāpu/kishpū) accusations — Mesopotamian law regulates and institutionalizes the magical-accusation process rather than prohibiting magic itself, in direct contrast to the Deuteronomic outright ban on all sorcery practitioners Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §2 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- middle assyrian laws death penalty for a person proven to have made or commissioned magical preparations (kishpū) against another — the Assyrian approach criminalizes harmful sorcery through formal adjudication, unlike the Deuteronomic categorical prohibition on all mekhashshef practice Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Tablet A §47 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- hittite laws penalization of a magic-adjacent ritual act (killing a snake while invoking another person's name) — Hittite law addresses specific harmful magical acts rather than banning a class of practitioner, contrasting with the Deuteronomic programme of eliminating all competing divinatory and magical channels Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §170 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes capital punishment (death by stoning per Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4) for the practice of sorcery, targeting what was understood as a competing religious-technical practice; post-Enlightenment religious-freedom norms protect individuals' right to engage in folk-religious, magical, or esoteric practices without state-sanctioned death.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 18 guarantees the freedom to manifest religion or belief in observance and practice; a capital prohibition on sorcery enforced by the state directly contradicts this guarantee when the 'sorcery' at issue constitutes a recognized or folk-religious practice of the offender.
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UDHR Articles 18–19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment extends beyond worship to prohibit specific ritual techniques and knowledge-seeking practices, restricting what individuals may believe works and what procedures they may perform — a form of epistemic regulation that conflicts with the freedom of conscience and expression protected by UDHR Articles 18–19.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality bars capital punishment for non-violent ritual offenses; the prescribed sanction of death by stoning for practicing sorcery — a non-violent, victimless act on the offender's part — is categorically disproportionate under any contemporary sentencing framework.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6 limits the death penalty to 'the most serious crimes' construed as crimes involving intentional killing; applying capital punishment to sorcery exceeds this threshold and conflicts with the article's object and purpose as interpreted by the Human Rights Committee.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital jurisdiction over sorcery and comparable offenses lapsed with the destruction of the Sanhedrin in 70 CE; the de jure norm prescribing stoning remains textually operative, but its practical enforcement has been suspended for nearly two millennia.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #540 — Structural duplicate of #540 sharing collision_key chinuch:511. Independent reading of both full entries confirms #540 and #541 are the same prohibition (mekhashshef, Deut 18:10, k-sh-p root). They share identical operative Hebrew text, identical Strong's lemmata triplet (H3808/H4672/H3784), identical stoning sanction per Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4, and identical Mai See task #95..