“ ‘In the beginnings of your months, you shall offer a burnt offering to Yahweh: two young bulls, one ram, seven male lambs a year old without defect,
To offer the additional offering at the new moon (Rosh Chodesh)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּבְרָאשֵׁי חָדְשֵׁיכֶם תַּקְרִיבוּ עֹלָה לַיהוָה פָּרִים בְּנֵי־בָקָר שְׁנַיִם וְאַיִל אֶחָד כְּבָשִׂים בְּנֵי־שָׁנָה שִׁבְעָה תְּמִימִם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה להקריב קרבן בכל ראש חודש מוסף על תמיד של כל יום, וזהו מוסף ראש חדש, והוא אמרו יתעלה ויתברך שמו ובראשי חדשיכם וגו'. (פינחס, תמידין ומוספין פ"ז):
That is that He commanded to offer a sacrifice on every Rosh Chodesh (first day of the month) in addition to the regular offering of every day. And that is His, may He be exalted and may His name be blessed, saying, "And on the beginnings of your months, etc." (Numbers 28:11). (See Parashat Pinchas; Mishneh Torah, Daily Offerings and Additional Offerings 7.)
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
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Not 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 4Q320-330 (Calendrical/Mishmarot texts) affirmed it
- 11Q19 (Temple Scroll), festival sacrificial calendar (cols. 13-29) read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- b. Chullin 60b expanded it homiletically
- b. Shevuot 9a expanded it homiletically
- Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer 51 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.140-144 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.177-179 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.238 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Colossians 2:16-17 treated it as abrogated Pauline dismissal of observance of 'new moon' (neomēnia) along with Sabbaths and festivals as a 'shadow of things to come'
- Galatians 4:10 rejected it polemically criticizes observance of 'days and months and seasons and years'
The Church Fathers
- John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos, Homily 3 rejected it polemically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:189 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic only Addresses the crescent moons (ahillah) as appointed markers of time and pilgrimage, not a new-moon sacrificial offering; connection is to lunar timekeeping only.
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 West Semitic moon-god Yarih (Ugaritic lunar deity) receives cultic veneration; the Priestly new moon musaf reorients the heightened sacrificial activity at the lunar crescent from veneration of a lunar deity toward YHWH Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.24 (The Wedding of Nikkal and Yarih) Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, 2 vols. (Brill, 1994, 2009); 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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.