or a charmer, or someone who consults with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
Not to consult a medium or necromancer who speaks to the dead
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְשֹׁאֵל אוֹב
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו משאול בעל אוב. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא ימצא בך וגו' ושואל אוב. והעובר על לאו זה כלומר שישאל באוב אינו חייב מיתה אבל הוא אסור. (שם, שם):
That He prohibited us from inquiring of someone with an ov. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Let no one be found among you ... or one who asks an ov" (Deuteronomy 18:10-11). And one who transgresses this negative commandment - meaning he inquires of an ov - is not liable for death, but it is forbidden. (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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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
- Leviticus Rabbah 26:7 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.60-65 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 6.327-342 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative expansion
The New Testament
- Acts 16:16-18 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic echo Paul exorcises a slave girl with a 'spirit of divination' (pneuma pythōna), echoing the LXX engastrimythos tradition
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homily on the Witch of Endor (In I Reg. 28 / De Engastrimytho) read it allegorically
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 prescribed for adjudicating false sorcery (kishpu) accusations, treating sorcery as a matter for institutional/legal procedure rather than blanket cultic prohibition — a contrast to the Deuteronomic outright ban on divinatory specialists Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §2 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- gilgamesh epic the ghost (eṭemmu) of Enkidu rises from the netherworld to speak with the living, attesting to Mesopotamian belief that the dead could be summoned to communicate knowledge — the institutional practice the prohibition forecloses Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet XII (Sumerian Descent of Gilgamesh), lines 83-153 George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003)
- ugaritic texts invocation of the rpum (shades/spirits of the deified dead) summoned to a banquet, attesting Levantine ritualized contact with the dead — the institutional background the biblical prohibition opposes Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.20-1.22 (Rephaim Texts) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL Writings from the Ancient World 10, 2002), pp. 192-210
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.
The commandment imposes corporal punishment (lashes) on individuals who consult a medium, criminalizing a personal act of seeking spiritual knowledge or grief-related comfort through a ritual specialist; modern criminal law does not recognize consulting a religious practitioner as a punishable offense.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; the imposition of lashes for consulting a medium constitutes corporal punishment that is categorically impermissible under this provision.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the authority to impose lashes lapsed with the dissolution of ordained Sanhedrin courts; the de jure corporal sanction for consulting an ov remains textually operative but has been unenforceable since the end of the Second Temple era.