You shall burn the engraved images of their gods with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourself, lest you be snared in it; for it is an abomination to Yahweh your God.
Not to derive any benefit from idols or their ornaments
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תַחְמֹד כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב עֲלֵיהֶם וְלָקַחְתָּ לָךְ פֶּן תִּוָּקֵשׁ בּוֹ כִּי תוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ הוּא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מחבר דבר מע"ז אל ממוננו, אבל נרחיק ממנה ומבתיה ומכל מה שייוחס אליה. והוא אמרו ולא תביא תועבה אל ביתך. ומי שנהנה מדבר ממנה חייב מלקות. וכבר בארו בסוף מכות (דף כ"ב) שמי שבשל בעצי אשרה לוקה שתים, אחת משום לא תביא תועבה אל ביתך ואחת משום ולא ידבק בידך, ודע זה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשלישי מסנהדרין. (והיה עקב, שם):
That He prohibited us from attaching something from an idol to our wealth. Rather, we must distance ourselves from it, from its houses and from everything that is associated with it. And that is His saying, "You must not bring an abomination into your house" (Deuteronomy 7:26). And one who benefits from something of it is liable for lashes. And they already explained at the end of Makkot (Makkot 22a) that one who cooks with the wood of an Asherah is lashed twice - one, on account of "You must not bring an abomination into your house"; and one on account of, "And let nothing stick to your hand." And know this. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the third [chapter] of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 4.)
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, with modification
- 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 38:13 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.21-31 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.207 reinterpreted it
The New Testament
- Acts 15:29 reinterpreted it Apostolic decree forbids eidōlothyta (food offered to idols); thematically related to, rather than directly derived from, the Deut 7:25 ban on benefit from idol plating
- 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 reinterpreted it Paul relativizes the prohibition on idol-meat by appeal to the nullity of idols while warning against scandalizing the 'weak'
- Revelation 2:14 reinterpreted it Letter to Pergamum invokes the Balaam typology to condemn those eating eidōlothyta, extending broader idol-avoidance to the addressed community
The Church Fathers
- Tertullian, De Idololatria 10-11 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:90 carried a parallel
- Q 6:74 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 royal inscriptions Mesopotamian victors typically captured the cult statues of defeated peoples and either deported, displayed, or restored them — the divine image and its precious materials retained value and were appropriated; this stands in polemical contrast to the Deuteronomic demand to burn the images and refuse all benefit from their silver and gold Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian accounts of the capture and deportation of divine statues ('godnapping'), e.g., the carrying off of Marduk's statue from Babylon and its later return Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. (SBL, 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 substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits deriving any economic benefit from objects associated with other religious traditions, imposing a religiously defined exclusion zone around the material culture of non-Israelite worship; this conflicts with religious-freedom norms that prohibit discriminating against persons or their religious property on grounds of religious identity.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 18 protects the right to manifest religion through practice and observance; the commandment's prohibition on economic dealings with idol materials operates as a state-sanctioned religious classification of objects, penalizing contact with the material expressions of other religions in a manner that conflicts with Article 18's broader protection of religious manifestation.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment imposes 39 lashes for economic dealings with idol-associated materials; no contemporary criminal code prohibits commercial activity on the basis of the religious origin of goods, and corporal punishment for such dealings is incompatible with modern 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; the imposition of lashes for handling religiously classified materials constitutes 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 dealing with idol materials is textually operative but practically suspended.