Don’t eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire; with its head, its legs and its inner parts.
Not to eat the flesh of the Passover offering raw or boiled in water
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אַל־תֹּאכְל֤וּ מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ נָ֔א וּבָשֵׁ֥ל מְבֻשָּׁ֖ל בַּמָּ֑יִם כִּ֣י אִם־צְלִי־אֵ֔שׁ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מאכול קרבן פסח מבושל או נא אלא צלי אש בלבד. והוא אמרו יתעלה אל תאכלו ממנו נא ובשל מבושל במים. וכבר בארתי בשרש ט' מזה המאמר שמי שעבר על לאו זה לוקה. (בא אל פרעה, קרבן פסח פ"ח):
He prohibited us from eating the Pesach-offering boiled or uncooked, but rather only roasted with fire. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You must not eat it uncooked or boiled in water" (Exodus 12:9). And I have already explained, in Principle 9 (Sefer HaMitzvot, Shorashim 9:5) of this essay, that one who transgressed this negative commandment is lashed. (See Parashat Bo; Mishneh Torah, Paschal Offering 8.)
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.
- 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
- 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 As the catalog records it: binding in principle (no Temple, non practiced)
- Conservative As the catalog records it: non practiced (no Temple)
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: non practiced (no Temple)
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 2.145-149 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.248 affirmed it
The New Testament
- John 19:36 reinterpreted it The 'not a bone shall be broken' motif (cf. Exod 12:46) is applied christologically; the whole-roasted intact victim is part of the typological reading of the pesach
The Church Fathers
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 40 reinterpreted it
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 5 (prohibition of cruel or degrading treatment)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Thirty-nine lashes as the prescribed penalty for consuming Passover sacrifice meat prepared by a proscribed method constitutes corporal punishment that UDHR Article 5 categorically prohibits as cruel or degrading treatment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Modern penal proportionality precludes corporal punishment for dietary and ritual violations; the imposition of lashes for a cooking-method infraction is categorically disproportionate by post-Enlightenment standards.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
This commandment is doubly inoperative: it requires the Temple (destroyed 70 CE) for the Passover sacrifice to exist, and even if the Temple were rebuilt, the authority to impose lashes lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; both preconditions for enforcement are absent.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #123 — Structural duplicate of #123 sharing collision_key shm:Negative 125. Independent analysis converges on Sonnet's verdict. Both #123 and #591 cover the identical SHM Negative 125 prohibition derived from Exodus 12:9: do not eat the Pesach offering raw (na) or boiled in water (bashel mevushal ba-mayim). Identifiers align across every axis: same reference (Exodus 12:9), See task #95..