“ ‘You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you. I am Yahweh.
Not to tattoo the body
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּכְתֹבֶת קַעֲקַע לֹא תִתְּנוּ בָּכֶם אֲנִי יְהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מרשום בגופנו במיני צבעונים כגון הכהול והוירדט וזולתם כמו שיעשו עובדי ע"ז כמו שהוא מפורסם אצל אנשי מצרים עד היום, ואזהרה מזה הוא אמרו וכתובת קעקע לא תתנו, והעובר על לאו זה חייב מלקות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בסוף מכות. (קדושים תהיו, שם פי"ב):
That He prohibited us from inscribing colors - such as blue, violet and others - on our bodies, as is done by the idol worshippers. [This] is well known among the people of Egypt until today. And this prohibition is His saying, "and do not put tattoo marks" (Leviticus 19:28). And one who transgresses this negative commandment is liable for lashes. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained at the end of Makkot. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 12.)
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.
The New Testament
- Revelation 13:16-18 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic echo The 'mark of the beast' on hand/forehead as a sign of allegiance reflects ongoing body-marking-as-loyalty imagery, not a halakhic ruling on Lev 19:28
- Revelation 7:3 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic echo Sealing the righteous on the forehead as protective marking, continuing the tau-mark tradition of Ezek 9:4 rather than ruling on Lev 19:28
- Galatians 6:17 reinterpreted it Paul's 'marks (stigmata) of Jesus' on his body spiritualizes the devotional-marking motif
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 concerns a barber (gallabu) who, without the owner's consent, removes/alters the abbuttum (the identifying slave-mark), incurring severe penalty; the institutionalization of a permanent ownership-mark on slaves in Mesopotamian law forms the social background against which the Holiness Code rejects devotional self-marking that places oneself in an ownership-relation to a deity other than YHWH Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §226-227 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- middle assyrian laws regulates the pledging and sale of persons and the marks/claims attaching to them; the ANE practice of using permanent body-marks and tokens to denote ownership over persons is the institutional background against which the prohibition of self-marking for a deity takes on its polemical force Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet C+G §§2-3 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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 substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits tattooing one's body under threat of corporal punishment; while modern law may regulate tattooing for health and commercial reasons, subjecting individuals to lashes for a permanent body modification they choose for themselves conflicts with bodily-autonomy norms that place decisions about one's own body within the domain of personal self-determination.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes 39 lashes for receiving a tattoo; modern criminal codes do not treat personal body modification as a criminal offense, and the use of corporal punishment for this choice is incompatible with contemporary penal frameworks.
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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 tattooing constitutes corporal punishment that is 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 sanction for tattooing is textually operative but practically suspended.