You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside Yahweh your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves.
Not to plant a tree in the Temple courtyard (ashera)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִטַּע לְךָ אֲשֵׁרָה כָּל־עֵץ אֵצֶל מִזְבַּח יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שנמנענו מלנטוע אילנות במקדש או אצל המזבח על דרך הנוי והיופי לכוין בזה עבודת האל יתעלה, לפי שכך היו עושין עובדי ע"ז שהיו נוטעין להם אילנות יפים ותאוה לעינים בבתי עבודתם. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תטע לך אשרה כל עץ אצל מזבח ה' אלהיך. והעובר על לאו זה הוא חייב מלקות. וכבר נתבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת תמיד ושם נאמר שהנטיעה אסורה במקדש. (שופטים ושוטרים, מדע הלכות ע"ז וחקות העכו"ם פ"ו):
That is that we have been prevented from planting trees in the Temple or next to the altar, by way of decoration and beauty for the sake of God's service, may He be exalted - because the idol worshippers would do this. For they would plant beautiful trees that were appealing to the eyes in the houses of their worship. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Do not plant an Asherah for yourself, any tree near the altar of the Lord, your God" (Deuteronomy 16:21). And one who transgresses this negative commandment is liable for lashes. And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Tamid - and there, it says that planting is forbidden in the [entire] Temple. (See Parashat Shoftim; 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 prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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: binding in principle (Temple dependent)
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding in principle (Temple dependent)
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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 present Asherah (Athirat) as a major goddess and El's consort associated with trees and the sea; the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions ('YHWH and his asherah') and the biblical prohibition address the absorption of this goddess and her tree-cult into Israelite worship Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.4 I 14-23; 1.6 I 39-41 (Asherah / Athirat as El's consort, tree/sea goddess) 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes 39 lashes for planting a tree or asherah near YHWH's altar — an offense contingent on Temple existence (requires_temple=true); the sanction is doubly inoperative: the required Temple context no longer exists, and lash-jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of ordained Sanhedrin courts.
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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 prescribed corporal sanction of 39 lashes for a cultic horticultural offense is categorically prohibited by this provision, though the offense cannot currently be committed given Temple absence.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Both the Temple precondition and Sanhedrin lash-jurisdiction are absent; the commandment is doubly inoperative — the offense cannot be committed without a standing Temple, and enforcement authority lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin after 70 CE.