Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb; and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck; and you shall redeem all the firstborn of man among your sons.
To break the neck of the firstborn donkey if it is not redeemed
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִם־לֹא תִפְדֶּה וַעֲרַפְתּוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לערוף פטר חמור אם לא נפדה אותו, והוא אמרו יתברך ואם לא תפדה וערפתו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת בכורות. ויש למקשה שיקשה ויאמר ולמה מנית פדותו ועריפתו שתי מצות ולא מנית אותן מצוה אחת ותהיה עריפתו מדיני המצוה כמו שקבלו בשורש השביעי. הנה יודע האל כי ההיקש מחייב זה לולא מה שמצינו לרבותינו לשון יורה על זה היותם שתי מצות, והוא אמרו מצות פדיה קודמת למצות עריפה ומצות יבום קודמת למצות חליצה. וכמו שהיבמה מוכנת אם ליבום אם לחליצה והיבום מצוה והחליצה מצוה כן פטר חמור ראוי או לפדיה או לעריפה וכל אחד ואחד מצוה כמו שאמרנו. (כי תשא, הלכות בכורים פי"ב):
That is that He commanded us to behead the [firstborn] donkey if we do not redeem it. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "if you do not redeem it, you must behead it" (Exodus 34:20). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Bekhorot. And the questioner may challenge and say, "But why did you count its redemption and its beheading as two commandments; and why did you not count them as one commandment, such that its beheading be from the laws of the commandment - like [you explained] in the seventh principle?" Behold God knows that the analogy requires this, were it not that we found with our Rabbis a language that indicates that they are two commandments. And that is their saying, "The commandment of redemption precedes the commandment of beheading; the commandment of levirate marriage precedes the commandment of chalitzah" (Bekhorot 13a). And just like a levirate wife is suited for either levirate marriage or chalitzah; and levirate marriage is one commandment and chalitzah is [another] commandment - so too, is a [firstborn] donkey suited for either redemption or beheading; and each of them is a commandment, as we have said. (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 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.
- 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 Contested
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
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa (Bo), on Exod 13:13 The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic/homiletic discussion
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.