A woman shall not wear men’s clothing, neither shall a man put on women’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh your God.
A man shall not wear a woman's garments
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא־יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מהתקשט האנשים בתכשיטי הנשים. והוא אמרו ולא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה, וכל אדם שיתקשט (גם) כן או לבש מה שהוא מפורסם במקום ההוא שהוא תכשיט מיוחד לנשים לוקה. ודע שזאת הפעולה כלומר היות הנשים מתקשטות בתכשיטי האנשים והאנשים מתקשטים בתכשיטי הנשים פעמים יעשו לעורר הטבע לזמה כמו שהוא מבואר בספרים המחוברים לזה, והרבה מה שיושם בתנאי בעשיית קצת הטליסמא ויאמר אם יתעסק בו אדם ילבש בגדי נשים ויתקשט בזהב ופנינים והדומה להם, ואם היתה אשה תלבש השריון ותזדיין בחרבות, וזה מפורסם מאד אצל בעלי הדעת הזאת. (כי תצא, שם):
That He prohibited us from men adorning themselves with women's ornaments. And that is His saying, "nor may a man wear a woman’s garment" (Deuteronomy 22:5). And any man who adorns himself like this or wears what is well-known in that city to be an ornament specific to women - is lashed. And you should know that this procedure - meaning that the women adorn themselves with men's ornaments and the men adorn themselves with women's ornaments - is done to arouse the drive for promiscuity, as is explained in the books written about this. And it is often placed in the stipulations for the making of some talismans and said, "If a man is occupied with it, he should wear women's garments and adorn himself with gold and pearls and that which is similar to them; but if it was a woman, she should wear armor and arm herself with swords." And this is very famous among those of this opinion. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; 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 As the catalog records it: contested (varied CJLS responsa; no single codified position)
- Reform Not binding
- 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
- Sifre Deuteronomy §226 (approx.) expanded it homiletically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Sahih al-Bukhari 5885 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.
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic texts use the spindle (distaff) as a gender-marked female implement and bow/weapon as male, creating a West Semitic cultural matrix in which gendered tools signal social-divine roles; the Deuteronomic term keli gever ('man's equipment/weapon') draws on this same symbolic system, and the prohibition against cross-wearing rejects its cultic application in Levantine worship Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.3 III 30-31; 1.16 VI 50-57 (Baal Cycle and Aqhat epic, references to gender-marked implements) Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, 2 vols (Brill, 1994, 2009); Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
- hittite laws Hittite ritual texts deploy male and female gender-essence tokens (weapon vs. spindle) in sympathetic magic rituals to effect gender transformations; Hoffner's foundational study shows that the semantic range of gendered implements in ANE ritual directly illuminates the Deuteronomic term keli gever and the prohibition on men wearing women's garments, which the text classifies as to'evah in the same register as idolatrous cult practices Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§200a-200b (ritual-purity miscellany) 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 prohibits a man from wearing women's clothing under threat of corporal punishment, imposing state-backed religious enforcement on personal clothing choices that cause no harm to others — a direct contradiction of post-Enlightenment norms holding that individuals have the right to determine their own appearance and self-expression.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment enforces rigid binary gender categories in dress, penalizing gender-nonconforming expression for men; this conflicts with evolving gender-equality and non-discrimination norms that recognize gender identity and expression as protected characteristics, treating deviation from binary gender norms as grounds for punishment.
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Article 17
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 17 protects individuals against arbitrary interference with their privacy; the regulation of personal clothing choices through criminal sanction constitutes an intrusion into the private sphere that Article 17 is designed to protect.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes 39 lashes for wearing gender-atypical clothing; no modern criminal code treats clothing choice as a criminal offense warranting corporal punishment, making the prescribed method wholly incompatible with contemporary penal norms.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; imposing lashes for wearing a garment is 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 lash-jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of ordained Sanhedrin courts after 70 CE; the de jure corporal sanction for cross-dressing is textually operative but practically suspended.