Nothing of the devoted thing shall cling to your hand, that Yahweh may turn from the fierceness of his anger and show you mercy, and have compassion on you and multiply you, as he has sworn to your fathers,
To burn an apostate city (ir hanidachat) that has entirely turned to idolatry
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְשָׂרַפְתָּ֨ בָאֵ֜שׁ אֶת־הָעִ֤יר וְאֶת־כָּל־שְׁלָלָהּ֙ כָּלִ֔יל לַיהוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ וְהָיְתָה֙ תֵּ֣ל עוֹלָ֔ם לֹ֥א תִבָּנֶ֖ה עֽוֹד
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה להרוג אנשי עיר הנדחת כלה ולשרוף את העיר עם כל מה שבה וזהו דין עיר הנדחת. והוא אמרו יתעלה ושרפת באש את העיר ואת כל שללה כליל. וכבר התבאר משפטי מצוה זו בסנהדרין. (ראה, שם פ"ד):
That is that He commanded us to kill all the people of a condemned city (ir hanidachat) and to burn the city with everything that is in it. And this is the law of a condemned city. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall burn the city with fire and all its spoil totally" (Deuteronomy 13:17). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Sanhedrin. (See Parshat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 4.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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
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 Not binding
- 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 (addressing the broader Deut 13 apostasy/enticement complex) reinterpreted it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.302-309 reinterpreted 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 loyalty-oath enforcement against sedition; obligation to denounce and destroy disloyal parties Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast loyalty and curse sections (esp. the denunciation obligation and concluding curse series) 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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Article 3 (right to life)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment requires the massacre of an entire city's population on grounds of collective religious apostasy; UDHR Article 3 guarantees every person the right to life, which a commanded collective execution violates.
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Article 6 (right to life)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6 prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life; collective capital punishment of an entire population for communal religious defection is paradigmatically arbitrary under any modern legal standard.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment treats collective adoption of non-Yahwistic religious practice as an offense warranting total destruction of the community; the post-Enlightenment principle that communities may choose their own religious commitments without facing collective annihilation is directly contradicted.
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general principle (prohibition of genocide and collective punishment)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment mandates the killing of all inhabitants of a city — including those who may have been coerced, deceived, or who did not personally participate in idolatrous practice — which satisfies the legal definition of genocide under international criminal law (intentional destruction of a group on grounds of religion) and collective punishment prohibited by modern humanitarian law.
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general abrogation note
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Talmudic tradition (b. Sanhedrin 71a) records the view that an ir ha-nidachat 'never was and never will be,' and the procedural conditions imposed by the rabbis were virtually impossible to satisfy; the commandment remains de jure authoritative but has been functionally suspended through accumulated procedural requirements.