and when Yahweh your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them.
Not to show favor to idolaters
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תִכְרֹת לָהֶם בְּרִית וְלֹא תְחׇנֵּם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מחמול כלל על עובדי ע"ז ומליפות דבר מכל מה שמיוחד להם. והוא אמרו לא תחנם ובאה הקבלה לא תתן להם חן. עד שהאיש העובד ע"ז יפה הצורה אסור לנו לומר זה יפה תאר כמו שהתבאר בגמרא דילן (ע"ז כ'). ובגמ' ירושלמי (ע"ז פ"א ה"ט) אמר לא תתן להם חן בלא תעשה. (ואתחנן, מדע הלכות ע"ז וחקות העכו"ם פ"י):
He prohibited us from at all pitying idolaters and from lauding anything particular to them. And that is His saying, "do not show them mercy (techonem)" (Deuteronomy 7:2). And the tradition comes [to teach]: Do not show them favor; to the point that it is forbidden for us to say, "This one has a nice form," when an idolator has a nice form - as is explained in our Gemara (Avodah Zarah 20a). And in the Gemara Yerushalmi (Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 1:9), it said, "You shall not show them favor, [involves] a negative commandment." (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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 4QMMT C The catalog describes this reception as: thematic parallel (separation from outsiders, not direct citation)
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy, pisqaot on Deut 7 (the 'seven nations' / lo techannem material) expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.191-193 expanded it homiletically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 60:8-9 carried a parallel, with divergence
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 prohibition on entering into alliance or showing loyalty to parties outside the suzerain's covenant Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary §§ 57-72, 108-122 (loyalty / anti-conspiracy clauses) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 no. 6 (1988)
- hittite vassal treaties Hittite vassal treaties prohibit the vassal from showing favor (goods, information, asylum) to the suzerain's enemies; the lo techannem formula mirrors this exclusive-loyalty stipulation, reframing the Canaanite peoples as YHWH's enemies and forbidding any patronage of their interests Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary Treaty of Mursili II with Duppi-Teshub of Amurru (CTH 62), stipulation §§3-6 (exclusive loyalty to Hatti, prohibition of alliances with Hatti's enemies) Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties The Esarhaddon Succession Treaty forbids vassals from entering alliances, showing hospitality, or transferring resources to parties outside the suzerain's covenant network; the Deuteronomic lo techannem formula ('you shall not show them favor') closely parallels these exclusive-loyalty stipulations, recasting YHWH as suzerain whose vassals (Israel) may not patron the interests of rival divine-political parties (Canaanite peoples) Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary SAA 2 no. 6 (Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty / VTE), §§57-72, 108-122 (loyalty and anti-conspiracy stipulations) Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
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; the commandment as expanded by the rabbis into three sub-prohibitions (no praising, no gratuitous gifts, no land grants) creates a comprehensive class-based regime of legal disadvantage for persons defined by their religious practice, directly contradicting the non-discrimination guarantee.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 7 prohibits discrimination on any ground including religion; classifying idolaters as a group who may not receive grace, gifts, or land rights on the basis of their religious identity is a paradigmatic instance of the discriminatory treatment this article forbids.
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Article 12
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 12 protects freedom of movement and the right to choose one's residence; the rabbinic extension of *lo techannem* to prohibit granting land-settlement rights to idolaters in the Land of Israel conflicts with Article 12's protection of the right to choose one's place of residence without religious discrimination.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Liberal democratic governance requires that states treat all persons under their jurisdiction equally regardless of religious affiliation; a commandment prohibiting the extension of grace, gifts, or residence rights to persons classified as idolaters substitutes religious category for civic equality, in direct contradiction to the secular-democratic principle of equal treatment under law.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #450 — Structural duplicate of #450 sharing collision_key shm:Negative 50. Independent reading of both entries confirms true duplication of SHM Negative 50 (lo techannem, Deut 7:2). Both entries share identical metadata (chinuch 426, semag Negative 48, mishneh_torah Hilkhot Avodah Zarah 10:3-6, rambam_sefer_hamitzvot Negative 50), identical reference (Deut 7:2), identical See task #95..