“ ‘If anyone of the common people sins unwittingly, in doing any of the things which Yahweh has commanded not to be done, and is guilty,
To offer the sin offering (chatat) according to its prescribed ritual
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִם־נֶפֶשׁ אַחַת תֶּחֱטָא בִשְׁגָגָה מֵעַם הָאָרֶץ בַּעֲשֹׂתָהּ אַחַת מִמִּצְוֺת יְהוָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא־תֵעָשֶׂינָה וְאָשֵׁם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיקריב כל מי ששגג בחטא ויהיה יחיד קרבן הטאת. והוא אמרו יתעלה ואם נפש אחת תחטא בשגגה וזו היא חטאת קבועה כלומר שהיא לעולם חטאת בהמה. וכבר בארנו שהחטאים שיתחייב עליהן חטאת בשוגג הם שחייבין על זדונו כרת. ובתנאי שיהיו מצות לא תעשה ויהיה בהם מעשה, כמו שהתבאר בריש כריתות (דף ב'). ומשפטי מצוה זו נתבארו במסכת מנחות וכריתות ובמסכת שבת ובשבועות ובזבחים. (ויקרא אל משה, הלכות שגגות פ"א):
That is that He commanded us that anyone who erred in a sin and is an individual offer a sin-offering sacrifice. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And if a person sins in error." And that is a fixed sin-offering - meaning that is always an animal sin-offering. And we have already explained that sins for which we are liable for a sin-offering when inadvertent, we are liable for excision when volitional - and that is on condition that they are negative commandments and that they involve an action, as it is explained at the beginning of Keritot (Keritot 2). And the regulations of this commandment are explained in Tractate Menachot and Keritot, and in Tractate Shabbat, Shevuot and Zevachim. (See Parashat Vayikra; Mishneh Torah, Offerings for Unintentional Transgressions 1.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
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
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, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Kept as an ethical 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) cols. 16-18, 25-27 read it more strictly
- 4QMMT B read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 7:3 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.226-246 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.230-232 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Hebrews 9:11-14 treated it as abrogated Christ's blood presented as superseding the repeated animal chatat; the purification-offering typology is reframed christologically
- Hebrews 10:1-4 treated it as abrogated argues animal blood cannot truly take away sin, polemically diminishing the Levitical chatat's efficacy
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 2-3 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.
- hittite laws ritual purification for cultic/agricultural impurity and substitutionary offerings Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§163, 167-169 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites (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.