You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
Not to make a covenant with idolaters
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִכְרֹת לָהֶם וְלֵאלֹהֵיהֶם בְּרִית
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מכרות ברית עם הכופרים ולהבטיחם על כפירתם, רוצה לומר עם שבעה עממין. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תכרות להם ברית. וכבר בארנו במצות עשה קפ"ז שמלחמת שבעה עממין וכל מה שבא בהם ראוי למנותו ושהוא לא ילך דרך מצות שאין נוהגות לדורות. (ואתחנן, שם פ"י):
He prohibited us from making a covenant with the heretics - meaning, with the seven nations (of Canaan) - and to allow them to be secure. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall not make a covenant with them" (Deuteronomy 7:2). And we have already explained in Positive Commandment 187 that war with the seven nations, and everything that comes with them, is appropriate to list [as a commandment]; and that it is not in the way of the commandments that are not practiced for [all] generations. (See Parashat Vaetchanan; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 10.)
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
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
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 54:2 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.51-58 rationalized it
The New Testament
- 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 The catalog describes this reception as: analogical extension The 'do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers... what agreement has the temple of God with idols?' passage redeploys the separation logic in a community-boundary, non-political register; a minority of critics regard 6:14-7:1 as a possible non-Pauline interpolation, though this remains debated
The Church Fathers
- Tertullian, De Idololatria 20-22 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 5:51 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.
- sefire treaties invocation of both parties' deities as treaty witnesses and guarantors Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Stele I A, lines 7-12 Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire, 2nd ed. (BibOr 19/A, 1995)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties Neo-Assyrian adê-treaties characteristically involve the treaty parties' gods as co-witnesses, rendering such treaties inherently polytheistic entanglements Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast SAA 2 no. 6 (Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty / VTE): god-list and seal-of-witness section, and the extended curse-and-loyalty stipulations; the treaty invokes the parties' gods as co-witnesses and enforcers, the divine-witness mechanism that the prohibition 'with them or with their gods' (Exod 23:32) refuses Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- hittite vassal treaties Hittite parity and vassal treaties invoke both parties' pantheons as witness gods; the specific Exod 23:32 formulation 'with them and with their gods' presupposes the standard ANE treaty mechanism of divine witness lists that the prohibition refuses Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Treaty of Suppiluliuma I with Aziru of Amurru (CTH 49), divine witness list Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
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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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 26 guarantees equal protection of the law without discrimination on grounds of religion; a prohibition on making formal covenants or diplomatic agreements specifically with persons of another religion creates a religion-based exclusion from equal legal standing that Article 26 forbids.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 7 declares all persons equal before the law and entitled to equal protection without discrimination; excluding idolaters as a class from treaty-making on grounds of their religious identity is an instance of the discrimination this article prohibits.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
Modern international law and liberal democratic governance assume that states and communities may enter treaties and alliances on the basis of mutual interest without religious restrictions; a prohibition specifically targeting idolaters as a class ineligible for covenant relationships is incompatible with the religion-neutral framework of contemporary public international law.