Yahweh your God will raise up to you a prophet from among you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him.
To inquire of and obey a true prophet
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
נָבִיא מִקִּרְבְּךָ מֵאַחֶיךָ כָּמֹנִי יָקִים לְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵלָיו תִּשְׁמָעוּן
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשמוע לכל נביא מהנביאים לעשות כל מה שיצוה אפילו בהפך מצוה או כלל מצוה מהמצות האלו ובתנאי שיהיה זה לפי שעה, לא שיצוה להתמיד תוספת או חסרון, כמו שבארנו בפתיחת חבורנו בפירוש המשנה, והכתוב שבא בו הצווי הזה הוא אמרו אליו תשמעון. ולשון ספרי אליו תשמעון אפילו אמר לך עבור על אחת מן המצות הכתובות בתורה לפי שעה שמע לו. והעובר על דבריו חייב מיתה בידי שמים והוא אמרו יתעלה והאיש אשר לא ישמע אל דברי הנביא אשר ידבר בשמי אנכי אדרוש מעמו. וכבר התבאר בסנהדרין (דף פ"ט) שלשה מיתתן בידי שמים העובר על דברי נביא ונביא שעבר על דברי עצמו והכובש את נבואתו, הכל מאמרו אשר לא ישמע אל דברי הנביא אשר ידבר, קרי ביה אשר לא ישמיע. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בסוף סנהדרין. (שופטים ושוטרים, מדע הלכות יסודי התורה פ"ז):
That is that He commanded us to listen to all of the prophets, to do all that he commands - even against a commandment or a group of these commandments. And this is on condition that this be temporary, and that he not command a permanent addition or eradication - as we explained in the introduction of our composition in the Commentary on the Mishnah. And the verse in which the command appears is His saying, "to him shall you listen" (Deuteronomy 18:15). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 175:2) is, "'To him shall you listen' - even if he tells you to transgress one of the commandments of the Torah [...] temporarily, listen to him." And one who transgresses his word is liable for death at the hands of the Heavens. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And [if] anybody does not listen to the words [of the prophet] who speaks in My name, I will require it of him" (Deuteronomy 18:19). And it has already been made clear in Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 89a), "[In the case of] three, their execution is at the hands of the Heavens: One who transgresses the statement of a prophet, a prophet who violated his own statement and one who suppresses his prophecy." It is all from His saying, "does not listen (yishma) to the words [of the prophet] who speaks." Read into it, "Who shall not voice (yashmia)." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained at the end of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah 7.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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
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
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- 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)
- 4Q175 (Testimonia) 5-8 reinterpreted it
- 1QS 9:11 reinterpreted it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy 175-177 expanded it homiletically
- Deuteronomy Rabbah, Shoftim section (locator imprecise) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.64-65 (locator approximate) rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.165 (cf. 4.218 on judicial obedience) affirmed it Josephus's framing of prophetic succession and obedience; locator approximate
The New Testament
- Acts 3:22-23 reinterpreted it Deut 18:15 applied christologically to Jesus as the prophet 'like Moses'
- Acts 7:37 reinterpreted it Stephen's speech cites the verse messianically
- John 1:21 reinterpreted it expectation of 'the prophet' presupposes this verse
The Church Fathers
- Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica (on the prophet 'like Moses'; precise section approximate) reinterpreted it
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (christological reading of Deut 18; locator approximate, cf. Dial. 49) reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 7:157 inverted it polemically
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.
- mari prophetic letters intermediary figures (āpilum, muhhûm) delivering unsolicited divine oracles to the king Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence ARM 26/1 199-223 (prophetic/oracular letters, Durand's collection) Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari I/1 (ARM 26/1, 1988); accessible English texts in Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (SBL WAW 12, 2003)
- neo assyrian prophecies institutionalized prophetic oracles delivered to the king in the name of a deity Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence SAA 9 1-4 (oracles to Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal) Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, SAA 9 (1997)
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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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment imposes a binding obligation to obey prophetic rulings — creating a theocratic legislative channel outside elected or constitutionally grounded authority; secular liberal-democratic governance requires that law derive from public deliberation and constitutional process, not from claims to prophetic inspiration.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #9 — Structural duplicate of #9 sharing collision_key shm:Positive 172. Independent reading of both full entries confirms a true duplicate. Both #9 and #586 are positive commandments anchored to Deuteronomy 18:15 with identical Hebrew text (נָבִיא מִקִּרְבְּךָ מֵאַחֶיךָ כָּמֹנִי יָקִים לְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵלָיו תִּשְׁמָעוּן), identical operative verb (sh-m-ʿ qal), id See task #95..