They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
Not to allow idolaters to settle in the land of Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא יֵשְׁבוּ בְּאַרְצְךָ פֶּן יַחֲטִיאוּ אֹתְךָ לִי
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהושיב עובדי ע"ז בארצנו כדי שלא נלמוד כפירותם, באמרו לא ישבו בארצכם פן יחטיאו וגו', ואילו רצה העכו"ם לעמוד בארצנו אינו מותר לנו עד שקבל עליו שלא לעבוד ע"ז ואולם עובדי ע"ז לא ישכנו עמנו ולא נמכור להם נחלה ולא נשכיר להם בית, ובבאור אמרו לנו הפירוש לא תתן להם חנייה בקרקע. (ואלה המשפטים, שם):
He prohibited us from settling idol worshippers in our land, so that we not learn their heresy, with His saying, "They shall not dwell in your land lest they cause [you] to sin, etc." (Exodus 23:33). And if an idolator wants to remain in our land, it is only allowed when he accepts upon himself not to worship idols. However idol worshippers may not dwell with us [in the Land of Israel], nor may we sell them a holding nor may we rent them a house. And in the explanation (Avodah Zarah 20a), they told us, "Do not give them an encampment in the land." (See Parashat Mishpatim; 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.
- 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
- 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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not stated
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)
- 4Q174 (Florilegium) 1.3-4 The catalog describes this reception as: loose thematic analogue (exclusion from sanctuary, not land settlement)
Josephus
- Ant. 4.191-193 The catalog describes this reception as: general homiletic recapitulation of the Mosaic legal corpus, not a specific treatment of this prohibition
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 Neo-Assyrian treaty stipulations demanding separation from and non-association with disloyal parties; offers a loose structural analogue to the Deuteronomic logic of separating from threatening outsiders, though the treaty context concerns political loyalty rather than cultic contamination Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty (SAA 2.6), loyalty/exclusion stipulations generally Parpola and Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic Canaanite cult of Baal and Asherah, the specific idolatrous system the settlement prohibition targets; these texts document the living religious tradition Israel is warned against assimilating through coexistence with its practitioners Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1–1.6) generally Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, 2 vols (Brill, 1994, 2009)
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 13 (freedom of movement and residence)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment mandates exclusion of non-Israelite religious practitioners from the land of Israel on grounds of their religious identity; UDHR Article 13 establishes the right to freedom of movement and residence, which a religiously discriminatory settlement prohibition directly contradicts.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The prohibition subjects the right of residence to a religious-conformity test, conditioning who may dwell in a territory on their theological commitments; post-Enlightenment principles of religious pluralism hold that the state may not enforce residential exclusions on grounds of belief.
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Article 12 (freedom of movement)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 12 prohibits arbitrary restrictions on freedom of movement and residence; the commandment's religiously-motivated exclusion of idolaters from the territory represents precisely the kind of belief-based residency restriction that Article 12's non-discrimination reading proscribes.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #451 — Structural duplicate of #451 sharing collision_key shm:Negative 51. True duplicate confirmed. Both 451 and 561 share Exodus 23:33, identical Hebrew operative clause, SHM Negative 51, Chinuch 94, Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Avodah Zarah chapter 10, identical categories, identical source-critical attribution, identical operative-verb lemma yashab H3427, same lead ANE parall See task #95..