Commandments · Negative commandments

Not to refrain from hating the enticer to idol worship

#567 Negative commandment Deuteronomy 13:9

The cited verse

The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)

לֹא־תֹאבֶה לוֹ וְלֹא תִשְׁמַע אֵלָיו וְלֹא־תָחוֹס עֵינְךָ עָלָיו וְלֹא־תַחְמֹל וְלֹא־תְכַסֶּה עָלָיו

In Maimonides’ words

How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.

שימנע המוסת להקל נטירת המסית אבל הוא חייב לנטור אותו על כל פנים וכל זמן שלא יטור הוא עובר על מצות לא תעשה. והיינו דאמר יתעלה ולא תשמע אליו, ובא הפירוש מכלל שנאמר עזוב תעזוב עמו יכול אתה עוזב לזה, תלמוד לומר ולא תשמע אליו. (שם, שם):

That an incited one refrain from lightening the grudge against the inciter. Rather, he is obligated to begrudge the inciter no matter what. And so long as he does not begrudge him, he transgresses a negative commandment - and that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and do not listen to him" (Deuteronomy 13:9). And it appears in the explanation (Sifrei Devarim 89:2), "It is implied from its being stated, 'you must surely unload with him' (Leviticus 19:18) [that] perhaps you should unload [with] this one. [Hence] we learn to say, 'and do not listen to him.'" (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 5.)

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 Position uncertain

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.

Philo of Alexandria

  • De Specialibus Legibus 1.315-318 The catalog describes this reception as: discussed

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 obligation to report and not conceal seditious speech against the sovereign; prohibition on harboring conspirators Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §10 Parpola & Watanabe, 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.

  • general principle

    This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.

    The commandment mandates the active cultivation of hatred toward a family member solely on account of that member's religious advocacy; freedom of conscience encompasses the right to one's own emotional and cognitive responses to others' beliefs, and legally compelled hatred of a person for their religious convictions exceeds even the most restricted conception of permissible thought regulation.

  • Article 18 (freedom of thought)

    This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.

    ICCPR Article 18 protects freedom of thought absolutely, without qualification or exception; the commandment imposes a legal obligation to experience and maintain a specific negative emotional state toward a family member for their religious speech, penetrating the dimension of inner feeling that Article 18 identifies as beyond any state interference.

Source & licence

The commentary, cross-references, reception, and modern-conflict analysis in this section are drawn from a public compilation of the 613 commandments, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The cited biblical text is rendered from GEBible’s own public-domain reading corpus. CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab). GEBible’s presentation of this material is offered under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.