“Don’t make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, lest they play the prostitute after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call you and you eat of his sacrifice;
Not to eat or drink anything offered to an idol
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
פֶּן־תִּכְרֹת בְּרִית לְיוֹשֵׁב הָאָרֶץ... וְקָרָא לְךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ מִזִּבְחוֹ
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.
- 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
- 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 Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite 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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Numbers 131 expanded it homiletically expands the Baal-Peor episode linking commensality with Moabite women to idolatrous feasting
- b. Sanhedrin 106a expanded it homiletically aggadic uptake of the Balaam-counsel motif of seduction, emphasizing the Moabite/Midianite women rather than shared sacrificial meals as such
The New Testament
- 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 reinterpreted it Paul relativizes the prohibition — idols are 'nothing' and food is indifferent — yet restricts eating eidolothyta out of regard for the 'weak' conscience
- 1 Corinthians 10:18-22 affirmed it invokes the sacrificial-meal communion logic: partaking of idol-sacrifices is koinonia with demons
- Acts 15:20, 29 affirmed it Apostolic Decree imposes abstention from eidolothyta on gentile believers as a binding rule
- Revelation 2:14, 20 affirmed it condemns permitting consumption of idol-offerings: 2:14 invokes the teaching of Balaam (echoing Num 25/31), 2:20 the prophetess 'Jezebel'
The Church Fathers
- Tertullian, De Idololatria 22 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 6:121 carried a parallel
- Q 5:3 The catalog describes this reception as: partial parallel (food consecrated/dedicated to other than God, dietary consecration category rather than the commensality concern)
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.
- ugaritic texts the Ugaritic marzeah feast is a sacrificial banquet in which participants eat and drink in communion with a deity, precisely the social institution the Exodus 34:15 prohibition targets when it forbids eating 'of his sacrifice' Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.114 (El's banquet/marzeah text) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL, 2002)
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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UDHR Article 18-19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The prohibition treats participation in another religion's sacrificial feast as legally actionable conduct; post-Enlightenment frameworks protect the freedom to engage in inter-religious social and cultic practices as an expression of religious freedom and association.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 18 protects the freedom to manifest religion in practice and observance, which encompasses participation in the religious meals of other communities; the prohibition subjects such conduct to corporal punishment.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Thirty-nine lashes (malkot) for consuming food associated with another religion's ritual is grossly disproportionate to any harm cognizable under secular criminal law and constitutes corporal punishment for a non-violent dietary act.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Corporal punishment for the non-violent act of eating food offered at another religion's sacrifice violates the modern penal principle that punishment must be proportionate to identifiable harm.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic capital jurisdiction for malkot lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; the de jure norm of thirty-nine lashes for this offense remains but is not enforced in any contemporary Jewish legal system.