You shall not profane my holy name, but I will be made holy among the children of Israel. I am Yahweh who makes you holy,
To sanctify the name of God publicly
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תְחַלְּלוּ אֶת־שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲנִי יְהוָה מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לקדש את שמו והוא אמרו ונקדשתי בתוך בני ישראל. וענין זאת המצוה אשר אנחנו מצווים לפרסם האמונה הזאת האמתית בעולם ושלא נפחד בהיזק שום מזיק ואע"פ שבא עלינו מכריח לבקש ממנו לכפותנו שלא נשמע אליו אבל נמסור עצמנו למיתה ולא נתעהו לחשוב שכפרנו אע"פ שלבותינו מאמינים בו יתעלה. וזאת היא מצות קדוש השם המצווים בה בני ישראל בכללם, רוצה לומר התרת עצמנו למות ביד האנס בעבור אהבתו יתעלה וההאמנה באחדותו כמו שעשו חנניה מישאל ועזריה בזמן נבוכדנצר הרשע כשצוה להשתחות לצלם והשתחוו לו כל ההמון וישראל בכלל ולא היה שם מקדש שם שמים אבל פחדו הכל והיתה בזה חרפה לכל ישראל על אשר אבדה זאת המצוה מכללם. ולא נצטותה זאת המצוה אלא לכמו המעמד המפורסם הגדול ההוא אשר פחד ממנו כל העולם, ולהיות פרסום היחוד בזה יעד השם על ידי ישעיה שלא תשלם חרפת ישראל בזה המעמד ושיראו בהם בחורים בעת ההיא הקשה לא יפחידם המות ויתירו נפשם ויפרסמו האמונה ויקדשו את השם ברבים, כמו שהבטיחנו באמרו לא עתה יבוש יעקב ולא עתה פניו יחורו בי בראותו ילדיו מעשה ידי בקרבו יקדישו שמי וגו'. ולשון ספרא על מנת כך הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים על מנת שתקדשו שמי ברבים. ובגמרא (סנהדרין ע"ד:) אמרו בן נח מצווה על קדושת השם או אינו מצווה, תא שמע שבע מצות נצטוו בני נח ואם אתה אומר כן תמניא הוו, הנה נתבאר לך שהיא מכלל מיני המצות המחוייבות לישראל, ושמו ראיתם על זאת המצוה מאמרו ונקדשתי בתוך בני ישראל. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפרק שביעי מסנהדרין. (בפרשת אמור אל הכהנים, מדע הלכות יסודי התורה פ"ה):
That is that He commanded us to sanctify His name. And that is His saying, "and I shall be sanctified in the midst of the Children of Israel" (Leviticus 22:32). And the content of this commandment is that we are commanded to publicize this true faith in the world, and that we not fear the injury of any aggressor. And even though an oppressor seeks to coerce us, we may not listen to him, but rather must give ourselves over to dying; and not deceive him to think that we have denied [God or His Torah] - even if we [regardless] believe in Him, may He be exalted, in our hearts. And this is the commandment of sanctifying [God's] name, that the Jewish people is commanded as a whole - meaning, to allow ourselves to die at the hand of the coercer on account of our love for God, may He be exalted, and our faith in His unity. This is like that which was done by Chananiah, Mishael and Azariah at the time of the evil Nevuchadnetsar, when he commanded to bow down to an image and all of the masses bowed down to it, including the Jews; and there was no one there sanctifying the name of the Heavens. Rather all were afraid; and this was a great disgrace for all of Israel, since the commandment was lost from all of them. And this commandment (in such circumstances) is only commanded in such a large and public stand in which everyone is afraid. And this was a designated publicization of [God's] unity which was designated by God through Yishayah - that the disgrace of Israel not be complete during this stand, but that young men would appear at that difficult time; and death would not scare them and they would allow their lives [to be taken], such that they would publicize the faith and sanctify [God's] name among the masses. This is as He promised us when He said, "no more shall Yaakov be shamed, no longer his face grow pale. For when he - that is, his children - behold what My hands have wrought in his midst, they will sanctify My name, etc." (Isaiah 29:22-23). And the language of the Sifra is, "On this condition did I bring you out of Egypt: On condition that you sanctify My name among the masses." And in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 74b), they said, "Is a gentile (ben Noach) commanded about the sanctification of [God’s] name, or is he not commanded? Come and hear - the Children of Noach were commanded to observe seven commandments. And if you say like this, there would be eight." Behold it has become clear to you that it is among the commandments that are obligatory for the Jews. And they brought His saying, "and I shall be sanctified in the midst of the Children of Israel," as a proof for this commandment. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the seventh chapter of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Emor ; Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah 5.)
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.
- Recorded as practiced today
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 Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
Two readings, side by side
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this is one of them.
In the traditional Jewish reading How the Jewish legal (halakhic) tradition reads and defends this commandment, in its own developed voice — the classical reasons given for the commandments (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).
The tradition reads this as the duty to sanctify God’s name — to conduct oneself, and in defined extremes to give one’s life, in a way that honors the Name before others.
Maimonides counts the sanctification of the Name as a positive commandment and sets out its gravest case: when a Jew is publicly coerced to commit idolatry, a forbidden union, or bloodshed, he is to accept death rather than transgress (yehareg ve’al ya’avor). Outside those three, and outside public coercion, one transgresses and lives.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 5:1–4; Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 9 (12th c.)
The Talmud fixes the three matters for which one is to give one’s life rather than transgress — idolatry, forbidden unions, and bloodshed — and rules that for all other commandments, under coercion, one transgresses and does not die.
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
Linked rather than reproduced — Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a: A public-domain or CC0 English translation exists at this reference but does not carry the passage cited.
The Sefer HaChinuch gives the reason that a person’s readiness to honor the Name even at the cost of life expresses that the purpose for which he was created stands above the life of the body.
Sefer HaChinuch (13th c.)
Rabbinic citations here link to the source text at Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. Where a public-domain or CC0 English translation — one anyone may reuse — of the exact passage cited has been verified and is short enough to set out in full, the passage is also reproduced here in the source’s own words; where it is not, the citation says which of those conditions it missed. Which passages are reproduced is a matter of licensing, length and verification — never of how much a source matters.
The developed public-domain rationale gathered here sets out the classical bounds of the martyrdom obligation; a traditional treatment engaging that obligation with the modern claim of a right to life and self-preservation, which the on-page conflict summaries raise, is not yet gathered.
Modern critical scholarship How modern academic biblical scholarship reads this text — the source-critical and form-critical school. Its hedges are shown as it states them; nothing here is presented as settled fact.
Modern source-critical scholarship assigns this text to the Holiness Code (H).
Scholarly confidence in this reading: scholarly consensus.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against Mesopotamian and Canaanite cultures in which divine 'presence' and honor were mediated through cult statues and royal ritual rather than communal ethical conduct — implicitly contrasting the Holiness School's democratized, behavior-based theology of divine honor with the Babylonian *mīs pî* and *pīt pî* rites that consecrated divine images as loci of deity (per Milgrom and Knohl, the H-school's insistence that YHWH is sanctified *among the people* through their conduct, not through priestly manipulation of sacred objects, constitutes an implicit rejection of image-cult honor theology)..
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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifra, Emor 9:5 read it more strictly
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shirata 3 expanded it homiletically
- Genesis Rabbah 43:8 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Against Apion 2.232-235 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic attestation Josephus praises Jewish readiness to die for the laws, an early attestation of the martyrological theme later associated with kiddush hashem
The New Testament
- Matthew 6:9 / Luke 11:2 reinterpreted it 'Hallowed be thy name' (ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου) renders the kiddush hashem motif into petitionary prayer
- 1 Peter 3:15 reinterpreted it 'sanctify the Lord in your hearts' applies sanctification to confessional witness
The Church Fathers
- Tertullian, De Oratione 3 read it spiritually
- Cyprian, De Dominica Oratione 12 read it spiritually
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 the gods whose names are invoked as treaty witnesses must be honored and not defamed by the treaty parties — a cultic concern for divine name-prestige that parallels the Holiness Code's demand that YHWH be sanctified among Israel Relationship to the parallel: shared theme divine witness list and curse formulary, e.g., SAA 2 no. 6 §§25-41 (gods invoked as treaty witnesses) Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- middle assyrian laws a woman who strikes a temple-woman or curses the god's name incurs severe punishment — the earliest explicit ANE legislation treating cultic behavior as reflecting on divine honor, paralleling the Holiness Code's concern that improper priestly and communal conduct profanes or sanctifies the divine name Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet A §§1-2 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.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Maimonides codifies the martyrdom obligation (yehareg v'al ya'avor): when publicly coerced to violate the three cardinal sins — idolatry, sexual immorality, or murder — a Jew is required to accept death rather than comply. This directly contradicts the general principle of bodily autonomy, which holds that individuals possess a right to life and self-preservation not subject to coercive sacrifice for communal or religious honor.
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Article 6 (right to life)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The martyrdom dimension of kiddush hashem imposes a religious obligation to forfeit one's life in defined circumstances; ICCPR Article 6 protects the right to life and prohibits arbitrary deprivation thereof. While the obligation arises from external coercion rather than state action, the normative framework requiring the individual to choose death creates substantive tension with international protections against the premature forfeiture of life.
Leviticus 22:32 states, "You shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified (וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי) among the people of Israel — I am YHWH who sanctifies you." The positive commandment to sanctify God's name (קידוש השם, kiddush hashem) is derived from the latter half of this verse. The Hebrew root קדש means 'to set apart, to make holy,' and in this context it carries a public, communal dimension — God is sanctified *among* (בְּתוֹךְ) the Israelites. This is not private devotion but public demonstration. The verse sits within the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), a literary unit that scholars like Israel Knohl and Jacob Milgrom have argued represents a distinct priestly school (the 'Holiness School,' H) that revised and expanded the earlier Priestly source (P) with a stronger ethical and exhortatory character.
The concept of divine sanctification in its original Priestly context is primarily about maintaining the conditions under which YHWH can dwell among Israel. In the Priestly worldview, holiness is almost a physical property — a dangerous, contagious force that requires careful management through purity rules, sacrificial procedures, and proper conduct by priests. When the text says God is 'sanctified among the Israelites,' it means that Israel's behavior either upholds or undermines YHWH's holy reputation. This is a theology of divine honor: God's 'name' (שֵׁם) is his reputation, his public standing among the nations. Ezekiel 36:20–23 makes this explicit — Israel's exile 'profaned' God's name among the nations because it made YHWH look incapable of protecting his people. God's restoration of Israel will 'sanctify my great name.' The logic is not about God's feelings but about his cosmic reputation.
There is no precise ancient Near Eastern parallel to the concept of kiddush hashem, though the broader idea that human behavior reflects on divine prestige is widespread. Mesopotamian kings claimed to act for the 'glory' of their patron deities, and temple maintenance was understood as upholding divine honor. Egyptian pharaohs maintained ma'at (cosmic order) partly to sustain the gods' power. But the idea that ordinary people — not just kings or priests — can sanctify or profane the divine name through their ethical conduct is distinctively Israelite, or at least distinctively represented in the Holiness Code's democratized holiness theology (Lev 19:2: 'You [plural, all Israel] shall be holy, for I, YHWH your God, am holy').
The rabbinic development of kiddush hashem into the supreme religious obligation — ultimately encompassing martyrdom — represents one of the most dramatic expansions of a biblical concept in Jewish history. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 74a–b) established that one must accept death rather than violate the three cardinal sins (idolatry, sexual immorality, murder). During the persecutions under Antiochus IV (2nd century BCE) and later under Rome, kiddush hashem became the framework for understanding and valorizing martyrdom. Maimonides codified the obligation (Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah 5:1–4), distinguishing between public and private contexts. None of this is explicit in Leviticus 22:32, which is concerned with priestly sanctity and proper sacrificial procedure — the journey from 'don't bring blemished offerings' to 'die rather than worship an idol' is a remarkable case study in how legal traditions grow far beyond their textual origins.