“ ‘If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offerings, if he offers it from the herd, whether male or female, he shall offer it without defect before Yahweh.
To offer the peace offering (shelamim) according to its prescribed ritual
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִם־זֶבַח שְׁלָמִים קָרְבָּנוֹ אִם מִן־הַבָּקָר הוּא מַקְרִיב
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיהיה מעשה זבח השלמים על התואר הנזכר באמרו ואם זבח שלמים קרבנו, ואמר עוד להשלמת המעשה וזאת תורת זבח השלמים אם על תודה יקריבנו, אלו הארבעה מעשים כלומר מעשה העולה וחטאת והאשם והשלמים הם מעשה הקרבנות כלם, כי כל קרבנות בהמה יקריבו יחיד או צבור אמנם הוא אחד מאלו הארבעה מינים חוץ מן האשם כי הוא קרבן יחיד לעולם כמו שביארנו פעמים רבות. ומסכת מנחות כוללת דין אלו ארבע מצות גם כן ומה שיחובר מהן מן הדומה להן מן החיוב והפטור והמעשה הנפסד וההולך על היושר. (ויקרא אל משה, מעשה קרבנות פ"ט):
That is that He commanded us with the process of the peace-offering sacrifices - according to the description that is mentioned - with His saying, "And if his sacrifice is a sacrifice of peace-offerings" (Leviticus 3:1). And He said further with the completion of the process, "And this is the law of the sacrifice of the peace-offerings [...]. If he offers it for thanksgiving" (Leviticus 7:11-12). These four processes - meaning the process of the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, the guilt-offering and the peace offerings - are all the processes of sacrifices. For all animal sacrifices that are sacrificed by an individual or the community are perforce one of these four types. However the guilt-offering is exceptional, in that it is always the sacrifice of an individual - as we have explained many times. And Tractate [Zevachim] also includes the laws of these four commandments, and those things which are connected to them by being similar to them in terms of obligation and exemption; the disqualified process and the one done properly. (See Parashat Vayikra; Mishneh Torah, Sacrificial Procedure 9.)
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 ritual instruction
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
- Binding in the land of Israel
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding in principle
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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll), festival-offering section (cols. ~17-29) read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 9:8 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.212-225 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.225-230 rationalized it
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 šlmm shared-meal offering category, terminologically and functionally cognate Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence KTU 1.109; 1.41 Dietrich-Loretz-Sanmartín, KTU/CAT 3rd ed. (2013); del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion (1999/2004)
- ugaritic texts West Semitic communal sacrificial rite in which offerings are distributed among divine, priestly, and communal beneficiaries, paralleling the shelamim's tripartite distribution structure Relationship to the parallel: shared theme KTU 1.40 (national atonement ritual) Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (SBL WAW 10, 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.