“ ‘You shall not eat any meat with the blood still in it. You shall not use enchantments, nor practice sorcery.
Not to practice augury or interpret signs and portents
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תְעוֹנֵנוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מעשות המעשים בבחירה ממשפטי כוכבים והוא שיאמר זה היום טוב למעשה פלוני ונכון לעשות או זה היום מונע מעשות מעשה פלוני ונרחיק מעשותו, והוא אמרו יתעלה לא ימצא בך מעונן, וכבר נכפלה אזהרה זו ואמר ולא תעוננו. ולשון ספרא לא תעוננו אלו נותני העתים, כי הלשון נגזר מעונה, רוצה לומר לא יהיה בך מעונן שיאמר עת פלונית טובה והעונה פלונית רעה, והעובר על לאו זה חייב מלקות, ר"ל שיגיד העתים האלו לא מי שישאל בעדם, אבל השאלה ג"כ אסורה מחוברת אל היותה דבר אין אמיתות לה, ומי שיכוין בפעולתו לעת ידוע במבט כדי שיצלח או יהיה לו תועלת באותו מעשה לוקה מפני שעשה מעשה. ובכלל אזהרה זו גם כן אסור פועל החרטומים. ולשון חכמים (סנהדרין ס"ה:) מעונן אלו אוחזי עינים. והוא מין גדול מן התחבולה מחובר אליו קלות התנועה ביד עד שתדמה לאנשים שיעשה ענינים אין אמתתו בהם, כמו שנראה אותם יעשו תמיד יקחו חבל וישימו אותו בכנף בגדיהם ויוציאו נחש, וישליך טבעת לאויר ואחר כך יוציאוהו מפי אדם אחד העומדים לפניו, ומה שידמה לזה מפעולות החרטומים המפורסמים אצל ההמון כל פועל מהם אסור, ומי שעושה זה יקרא אוחז עינים והוא מין הכשוף, ומפני זה לוקה, והוא עם זה גונב דעת הבריות, וההפסד המגיע מזה גדול, כי כן ציור הענינים הנמנעים תכלית המניעה אפשריית אצל הסכלים והנשים והקטנים רע מאד, ויפסיד שכלם וישיבם להאמין הנמנע והיותו אפשר שיהיה, והבן זה. (שם, שם):
He prohibited us from doing actions chosen by astrology. And that is that one say, "This day is good for deed x and proper for its doing"; or "This day is foreboding regarding doing deed y, and we should distance ourselves from doing it." And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Let no one be found among you who [...] is an augur" (Deuteronomy 18:10). And this prohibition has already been repeated: He said, "you shall not practice augury (Leviticus 19:26)." And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 6:2) is, "'You shall not practice augury (teonenenu)' - these are those who assign a time (onah)." For the expression is rooted in [the term], onah - meaning to say, "Let no one be found among you who [...] is an augur" - who says, "Time x is good, and time y is bad." And one who transgresses this negative commandment is liable for lashes - meaning the one who proclaims these times, not the one who asks about them. However the asking is also forbidden, in addition to it being something that lacks truth. And one who calculates his action to [be at] a certain time with the intention that it be successful or that the action benefit him is to be lashed [as well], because he did an action. And included in this prohibition is also the forbidding of the acts of magicians. And the language of the Sages (Sanhedrin 65b) is, "An augur - these are those who fool the eyes." And this is a large category of machination connected to sleight of hand to the point that it appears to people that one is doing things, though there is no truth to them, such as we always see: They take a rope and place it into the corner of their garments and take it out as a snake; one throws a ring into the air and then takes it out from the mouth of one of those standing before him; and actions similar to this from the magic acts famous among the masses. Each one of these acts is forbidden; and one who does this is called one who fools the eyes. And it is a type of magic, so he is lashed. Moreover, he deceives people; and the damage that comes out of this is great. For showing the actualization of things that are impossible as [if they were] possible - when with fools, women and children - is very bad. It damages their intellect and brings them to believe that the impossible can actually be. And understand this. (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 Kept as an ethical principle
- 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 1.59-65 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.
- mesopotamian omen series The Šumma Ālu omen series interprets ordinary terrestrial and everyday phenomena (animal behavior, encounters, household occurrences) as authoritative divine signs; this is the institutionalized sign-reading practice that the Holiness Code me'onen prohibition rejects, and it directly parallels the rabbinic examples (a deer crossing one's path, a cat crossing before one). Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablets 1ff. (terrestrial/everyday-occurrence omens) Freedman, If a City Is Set on a Height: The Akkadian Omen Series Šumma Ālu ina Mēlê Šakin (1998-2017)
- mesopotamian omen series The Enūma Anu Enlil series is the canonical Mesopotamian celestial-omen compendium, interpreting astral and meteorological phenomena as divine signs for the king and state; this institutionalized 'reading of the times/heavens' is precisely the elite divinatory science that the me'onen prohibition rejects. Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Celestial omen tablets (e.g. Tablets 1-22, lunar/solar omens) Reiner & Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens (4 vols., 1975-2005)
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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UDHR Articles 18–19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits a specific technique of reading natural phenomena as omens, regulating not merely outward conduct but the epistemic practices through which individuals interpret their world; this extends religious law into the domain of personal perception and interpretation in a manner that conflicts with the freedom of thought and conscience protected by UDHR Articles 18–19.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 18 protects the freedom to manifest religion or belief in practice and observance; augury and omen-reading function as religious or spiritual practices in many traditions, and subjecting them to corporal punishment places the commandment in substantive tension with Article 18's protection of religious manifestation.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment imposes 39 lashes for interpreting signs and portents — a private epistemic and ritual practice — which no modern criminal code treats as a punishable offense; corporal punishment for non-violent personal practice is incompatible with post-Enlightenment penology.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 bars cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the imposition of lashes for augury constitutes corporal punishment that is categorically prohibited by this provision.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that lash-jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of ordained Sanhedrin courts after 70 CE; the de jure sanction for augury remains textually operative but unenforceable under any contemporary Jewish legal authority.