but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterwards the hands of all the people.
Not to save the life of the enticer to idol worship
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
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.
שהזהיר המוסת מהציל את המסית כשיראה אותו בענין המיתה והצרה. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תחוס עינך עליו ובא הפירוש מכלל שנאמר לא תעמוד על דם רעך יכול אי אתה עומד על דמו של זה תלמוד לומר לא תחוס עינך. (שם, שם):
That He prohibited an incited one from saving the inciter when he sees him in a matter of death or distress. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall show him no pity" (Deuteronomy 13:9). And it appears in the explanation (Sifrei Devarim 89:3), "It is implied from its being stated, 'you shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor' (Leviticus 19:16) [that] perhaps you should not stand by the blood of this one. [Hence] we learn to say, 'you shall show him no pity.'" (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.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.315-318 affirmed it
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 neither conceal nor aid one engaged in disloyal/seditious speech, extending to family members Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §10 (broader §§10-12 cluster), SAA 2.6 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.
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ICCPR Article 14
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prohibits any person — including the accused's own family — from intervening to preserve the enticer's life or to obstruct a capital proceeding; ICCPR Article 14 guarantees the right to have access to legal counsel and the presumption of innocence, and a legal regime that actively coerces potential defenders into silence violates these norms.
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Article 6 (right to life)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6 requires procedural safeguards to protect the right to life in capital proceedings; the commandment's removal of the ordinary duty to preserve another's life in the context of a capital sentence for a religious speech act strips away the procedural protections Article 6 demands.