Every offering of your meal offering you shall season with salt. You shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your meal offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.
Not to omit salt from any sacrifice
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תַשְׁבִּית מֶלַח בְּרִית אֱלֹהֶיךָ מֵעַל מִנְחָתֶךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהקריב קרבן מבלי מלח, והוא אמרו יתעלה ולא תשבית מלח ברית אלהיך, שאחר שהזהיר מהשבית מלח תגיע שאינו מותר להקריב התפל שאין טעם לו, ומי שהקריב התפל שאין טעם לו כלומר קרבן או מנחה חייב מלקות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בגמרא פסחים. (ויקרא אל משה, איסורי מזבח פ"ה):
He prohibited us from offering a sacrifice without salt. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and you shall not omit salt, the covenant of your God" (Leviticus 2:13). As once He forbade the omission of salt, you arrive at it not being permissible to bring up that which is unsalted, which has no taste. And one who offers unsalted meat which has no taste - meaning [as] a sacrifice or a meal-offering - is liable for lashes. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the Gemara, Pesachim. (See Parashat Vayikra; Mishneh Torah, Things Forbidden on the Altar 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 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 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.
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 1.289 read it spiritually
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.227 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 9:49-50 read it spiritually 'Everyone will be salted with fire... have salt in yourselves' — possible allusion to the sacrificial salt requirement reapplied ethically/eschatologically (link is conjectural)
- Colossians 4:6 read it spiritually speech 'seasoned with salt' echoes covenant-salt symbolism
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 1.4 read it allegorically
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.
Rambam (Hilkhot Issurei Mizbeach 5:11) codifies lashes for failing to apply salt to a Temple sacrifice; modern proportionality principles preclude corporal punishment for an omission in a cultic seasoning procedure that causes no harm to any person.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Post-Enlightenment penal codes do not criminalize failures to season ritual offerings, and flogging is not a permissible sanction in contemporary legal systems for any procedural omission in a cultic ceremony.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin; additionally, the commandment presupposes an operative Temple, making it doubly inoperative in the current era.