“Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and whoever is unclean by a corpse.
To send the ritually impure out of the camp according to their degree of impurity
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
צַו אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וִישַׁלְּחוּ מִן־הַמַּחֲנֶה כָּל־צָרוּעַ וְכָל־זָב וְכֹל טָמֵא לָנָפֶשׁ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשלוח הטמאים מן המחנה, והוא אמרו יתעלה וישלחו מן המחנה כל צרוע וכל זב. וזה המחנה הוא מחנה שכינה שחוצה לו לשכות העזרה כמו שבארנו בתחלת סדר טהרות מפירוש המשנה, וכתוב בספרי וישלחו מן המחנה אזהרה לטמאים שלא יכנסו למקדש בטומאה. וכבר נכפל זה הצווי בלשון אחר והוא אמרו וכי יהיה בך איש אשר לא יהיה טהור מקרה לילה ויצא אל מחוץ למחנה, רוצה לומר מחנה שכינה. ולשון מכילתא צו את בני ישראל וישלחו מן המחנה בעשה ומנין בלא תעשה תלמוד לומר ולא יטמאו את מחניהם. ובספרי ויצא אל מחוץ למחנה מצות עשה. (נשא, ביאת המקדש פרק ג'):
And that is that He commanded us to send away the impure from the camp. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "that they remove from camp anyone with tsaraat or a discharge" (Numbers 5:2). And this camp is the camp of the Divine Presence, outside of which are the compartments of the courtyard - as we explained at the beginning of the Order, Tahorot, in the Commentary on the Mishnah. And it is written in the Sifrei (Sifrei Bamidbar 1:1), "'That they remove from camp' - this is a prohibition for the impure not to enter the Temple while impure." And this command was already repeated with a different language, "If anyone among you has been rendered unclean by a nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp" (Deuteronomy 23:11) - meaning the camp of the Divine Presence. And the language of the Mekhilta is, "'Instruct the Israelites that they remove from camp' is a positive commandment. From where [do we know that] it is a negative commandment? 'And they shall not defile the camp' (Numbers 5:3)." And in the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 255:4), "'He must leave the camp' - that is a positive commandment." (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Admission into the Sanctuary 3.)
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 ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
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 Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) XLV-XLVI read it more strictly
- CD 12:1-2 read it more strictly concerns the purity regime of the holy city/city of the sanctuary rather than direct reception of the graduated camp-exclusion of Numbers 5
- 4QMMT B 64-72 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Bamidbar Rabbah 7:1 expanded it homiletically
- Pesikta Rabbati 16 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.261 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 3.261-264 affirmed it
- Contra Apionem 1.227-287 The catalog describes this reception as: polemical rebuts Manetho's Egyptian expulsion-of-lepers tradition rather than directly rationalizing Numbers 5
The New Testament
- Luke 17:12 carried a parallel lepers standing at a distance reflects the exclusion paradigm, mediated through later halakhic practice
- Matthew 8:2-4 carried a parallel healing and instruction to show oneself to the priest presupposes and operates within the purity-exclusion framework rather than reinterpreting it
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Numeros 6 read it allegorically
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.
- hittite instructions exclusion of impure persons and pollution from temple precincts Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence CTH 264 (Instructions for Temple Officials / Priests and Temple Personnel) J. L. Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts (SBL Writings from the Ancient World, 2013)
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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.