“ ‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up a carved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am Yahweh your God.
Not to lay a figured or decorated stone for prostration
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאֶבֶן מַשְׂכִּית לֹא תִתְּנוּ בְּאַרְצְכֶם לְהִשְׁתַּחֲוֺת עָלֶיהָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מעשות אבן מוכנת להשתחוות עליה אפילו היה זה לאל יתברך, וגם כן שלא יתדמה לע"ז כי כן עושין אבן מצויירת במלאכה מחוכמת לפני הצלם וישתחוו עליה לאותו צלם, ואמר ואבן משכית לא תתנו בארצכם להשתחוות עליה והעובר על לאו זה לוקה. ולשון ספרא לא תתנו בארצכם בארצכם אי אתם משתחוים על האבנים אבל אתם משתחוים על האבנים שבמקדש. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בגמרא מגלה. (בהר סיני, שם):
That He prohibited us from making a stone that is designed to bowing upon, even if this was for [bowing to] God, may He be blessed. And this too is because it resembles idolatry, since they would thus make a craftily decorated rock in front of the image, and bow down upon it to that image. And He said, "you shall not install a figured stone in your land to bow upon it" (Leviticus 26:1); and one who transgressed this negative commandment is lashed. And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 9:5) is, "'Not install in your land' - in your land, you do not bow upon the stones, but you do bow upon the stones in the Temple." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the Gemara, Megillah. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 6.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding as anti idolatry only
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
- The catalog describes this reception as: expanded
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 temple descriptions attest stone construction and decorated cultic installations as features of divine residences; relevant as background to the figured-stone cultic milieu the even maskit prohibition reacts against, though the passage describes palace architecture generally rather than figured prostration-surfaces specifically Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.4 VII 17-20 (Baal's palace/temple description) Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, 2 vols (Brill, 1994, 2009); 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.
-
UDHR Articles 18–19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits the installation of a decorated stone specifically for prostration — a form of religious practice — under threat of corporal punishment; freedom-of-conscience norms protect the right to manifest belief in worship through chosen forms, including prostration before decorated sacred objects.
-
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; the prohibition restricts the form of prostration (on decorated stone floors) even when directed toward YHWH himself, as rabbinic interpretation extends the ban, constituting a state-imposed constraint on the mode of worship that conflicts with Article 18.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes 39 lashes for installing a decorated stone for ritualized prostration; no modern criminal code treats the installation of religious paraphernalia as a punishable offense warranting corporal punishment.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; flogging an individual for installing a figured stone for prostration constitutes corporal punishment categorically barred by this provision.
-
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 this prohibition is textually operative but has not been enforced for nearly two millennia.