You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods: on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
To destroy idols and their appurtenances completely
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַבֵּד תְּאַבְּדוּן אֶת־כָּל־הַמְּקֹמוֹת אֲשֶׁר עָבְדוּ־שָׁם הַגּוֹיִם ... וְנִתַּצְתֶּם אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתָם וְשִׁבַּרְתֶּם אֶת־מַצֵּבֹתָם וַאֲשֵׁרֵיהֶם תִּשְׂרְפוּן בָּאֵשׁ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לאבד ע"ז ובתיהם כלם בכל מיני האבוד וההשחתה בשבירה ושריפה והריסה וחתוך כל מין במה שיהיה יותר מופלג ויותר ממהר בהשחתות, והכונה שלא נניח להם רושם. והוא אמרו יתעלה אבד תאבדון את כל המקומות אשר עבדו שם וגו' ונתצתם את מזבחותם, ואמרו גם כן כי את מזבחותם תתוצון. ובעבור שנזכר בגמרא סנהדרין (דף פ"ט:) אמרם מצות עשה דע"ז אמרו על צד התמה בע"ז מאי מצות עשה איכא תרגומא רב חסדא ונתצתם. ולשון ספרי מנין אתה אומר שאם קצץ ע"ז אפילו עשר פעמים והחליפה שחייב לקצצה תלמוד לומר אבד תאבדון. ואמרו שם ואבדתם את שמם בארץ ישראל אתה מצווה לרדוף אחריהם ואי אתה מצווה לרדוף אחריהם בחוצה לארץ. (תשא, ראה, מדע הלכות ע"ז וחקות עכו"ם פ"ז):
That is that He commanded us to destroy idolatry and all of its houses with all types of destruction, annihilation, breaking, burning, demolishing and cutting - every type according to what will be most enhanced and quickest in the destruction. And the intention is that we should not leave a trace of them. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You must surely destroy all the sites at which they worshiped, etc. And tear down their altars" (Deuteronomy 12:2-3); and His also saying, "you shall tear down their altars" (Deuteronomy 7:5). And because in the Gemara, Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 89b), it mentions their saying, "the positive commandment of idolatry," they said by way of wonder, "What positive commandment is there in idolatry? Rabbi Hisda explained, 'And tear down.'" And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 60:1) is, "From where [do we know] that if he cut down [idolatry] even ten times and it grew again, he must cut it down? [Hence] we learn to say, 'You must surely destroy.'" And they say there (Sifrei Devarim 60:10), "'And you shall destroy their name [from that place]' - In the Land of Israel, you are commanded to pursue it (its complete destruction); but you are not commanded to pursue it outside of the Land." (See Parashat Ki Tissa; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 7.)
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.
- Binding in the land of Israel
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Binding in principle
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
- Genesis Rabbah 38:13 expanded it homiletically Abraham smashing his father Terah's idols dramatizes the iconoclastic ideal; the link to Deut 12 is thematic rather than exegetically derived
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.200-201 affirmed it Within Josephus's paraphrase of Moses' farewell legislation, restating the obligation to confine sacrifice to the single divinely-chosen sanctuary and to suppress foreign cult
The New Testament
- Acts 19:19 carried a parallel Ephesian converts burn their books of magic; narrative echo of destroying cultic paraphernalia
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 21:57-58 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.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties The Esarhaddon Succession Treaty's demand of undivided loyalty (love/fear of the suzerain to the exclusion of rivals) is a widely-noted formal analogue to Deuteronomy's exclusive-loyalty theology; the comparison is to the loyalty-oath form rather than to a specific idol-destruction stipulation Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary SAA 2 no. 6 (Esarhaddon Succession Treaty / VTE), stipulations on exclusive loyalty Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- neo assyrian royal inscriptions Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions record the systematic capture, destruction, or deportation of conquered peoples' divine images as standard imperial practice; the Deuteronomic destruction command mirrors this ANE iconoclastic warfare while inverting its theological framing — destroying idols for YHWH's honor rather than as imperial spoil Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Assyrian royal annals (general practice of removing/deporting conquered peoples' divine images, e.g. Sennacherib and Esarhaddon campaign accounts) Cogan, Imperialism and Religion (SBL Monograph Series 19, 1974)
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 obliges the systematic physical destruction of other peoples' religious objects, shrines, and cultic installations; post-Enlightenment religious-freedom norms protect the right of religious communities to maintain their places of worship and sacred objects free from state-mandated destruction.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 18 guarantees freedom of religion, including the right to manifest religion in worship, observance, and practice; a positive obligation to destroy the physical infrastructure of other religions directly contradicts this guarantee when applied extraterritorially or to non-Israelite residents.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Contemporary criminal law in all secular jurisdictions classifies the systematic destruction of religious property as a crime (vandalism, destruction of cultural heritage); commanding such destruction as a religious obligation is incompatible with this framework.