“ ‘Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that a man devotes to Yahweh of all that he has, whether of man or animal, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed. Everything that is permanently devoted is most holy to Yahweh.
Not to sell property devoted under the ban (cherem)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כָּל־חֵרֶם אֲשֶׁר יַחֲרִם אִישׁ לַיהוָה מִכָּל־אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ מֵאָדָם וּבְהֵמָה וּמִשְּׂדֵה אֲחֻזָּתוֹ לֹא יִמָּכֵר וְלֹא יִגָּאֵל
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו ממכור שדה שהחרימו אותו בעליו ואפילו לגזבר שהופקד על ההקדש, והוא אמרו יתעלה כל חרם לא ימכר. ולשון ספרי לא ימכר לגזבר, וזה החרם הוא סתם חרמים. (שם, ערכין פ"ו):
He prohibited us from selling a field which its owners have dedicated - and even to the functionary who is appointed over consecrated property. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "any dedication [...] shall not be sold" (Leviticus 27:28). And the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 12:4) is, "'Shall not be sold' - to the functionary." And this dedication is [speaking about] unspecified dedications. (See Parashat Bechukotai; Mishneh Torah, Appraisals and Devoted Property 6.)
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
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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.
- code of hammurabi provisions governing the inheritance and dowry property of dedicated/priestess women (nadītu and related classes), whose estates are subject to restricted alienation tied to natal family and, in some cases, temple connection — a loose thematic analogy to the restricted alienability of property dedicated to the sacred sphere rather than a direct structural parallel to the cherem sale prohibition Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§178-182 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.