or a charmer, or someone who consults with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
Not to inquire of the dead
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְדֹרֵשׁ אֶל־הַמֵּתִים
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו משאול אל המתים כמו שיחשבו אותם שהם מתים באמת ואע"פ שהם אוכלים ומרגישים, ויחשבו שמי שיעשה כך וילבש כך יבא אליו המת בשינה ויאמר לו מה שישאל. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא ימצא בך וגו' ודורש אל המתים. ובגמרא סנהדרין (דף ס"ה:) דורש אל המתים זה המרעיב עצמו ולן בבית הקברות כדי שתשרה עליו רוח טומאה. וכל העובר על לאו זה חייב מלקות. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from inquiring of the dead - as is thought by those that are truly dead, even though they eat and feel - and think that one who does such and dresses like this will have a dead person come to him during [his] sleep and tell him what he asks. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Let no one be found among you, etc. or one who inquires of the dead" (Deuteronomy 18:10-11). And in the Gemara, Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 65b), [it says,] "'One who inquires of the dead' - this is one who starves himself and lodges in a graveyard so that a spirit of impurity should settle upon him." And anyone who violates this negative commandment is liable for lashes. (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
- 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
- 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.60-65 rationalized 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.
- gilgamesh epic Enkidu's shade rises from the netherworld and is questioned by Gilgamesh about conditions among the dead, the Mesopotamian template for 'inquiring of the dead' that the Deuteronomic prohibition targets Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet XII, lines 83-153 George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003)
- ugaritic texts the rapiuma (shades of dead warriors/heroes) are summoned and consulted as powerful intermediaries, representing the Levantine institutional practice of seeking knowledge from the dead that the prohibition forecloses Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.20-1.22 (Rapiuma texts) 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.
The commandment imposes corporal punishment (39 lashes) for inquiring of the dead — a private ritual act — which no modern criminal code recognizes as an offense; the incompatibility lies in the use of state-imposed corporal punishment against a non-violent personal practice.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; imposing lashes for consulting the dead constitutes corporal punishment categorically barred by this provision.
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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 after 70 CE; the de jure sanction remains textually operative but has not been practically enforced for nearly two millennia.