You shall redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb. If you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. No one shall appear before me empty.
To redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּפֶ֤טֶר חֲמוֹר֙ תִּפְדֶּ֣ה בְשֶׂ֔ה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שנפדה פטר חמור בשה לבד, ולא יפדה בזולתו, וינתן אותו השה לכהן, והוא אמרו יתברך ופטר חמור תפדה בשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת בכורות, והיא גם כן אין הלוים חייבין בה. (כי תשא, הלכות בכורים פי"ב):
That is that He commanded us that we should redeem the [firstborn] donkey specifically with a sheep, and it should not be redeemed with anything else. And one should give that sheep to a priest. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "But the firstling of a donkey you shall redeem with a sheep" (Exodus 34:20). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Bekhorot. And the Levites are also not obligated in this commandment. (See Parashat Ki Tissa; Mishneh Torah, Firstlings.)
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, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding per plain text; rabbinic lamb redemption mechanics not adopted
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
- Exodus Rabbah 20:19 expanded it homiletically
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.