“Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you have come into the land which I give to you, and shall reap its harvest, then you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest.
To offer the meal offering of the omer on the sixteenth of Nisan
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וַהֲבֵאתֶם אֶת־עֹמֶר רֵאשִׁית קְצִירְכֶם אֶל־הַכֹּהֵן
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצוה להקריב מנחת העומר, והיא מנחת שעורים, ביום ששה עשר בניסן ונקריב עמה כבש תמים בן שנתו לעולה, והוא אמרו יתעלה והבאתם את עומר וגו'. מנחה זו היא הנקראת בכורים, ואליה רמז באמרו יתברך שמו ואם תקריב מנחת בכורים. ולשון מכילתא כל אם ואם שבתורה רשות חוץ משלשה שהם חובה, אחד ואם תקריב מנחת בכורים, אתה אומר חובה או אינו אלא רשות תלמוד לומר תקריב מנחת בכוריך חובה ולא רשות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זאת כלם בשלמות בפרק עשירי ממנחות. (אמור, תמידין ומוספין פי"ז):
That is that He commanded to offer the grain offering of the omer. And that is the grain offering of barley on the sixteenth day of Nissan. And with it, we offer an unblemished year-old lamb. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "you shall bring the omer, etc." (Leviticus 23:10). This grain offering is what is called, "first fruits." And He hinted to it in His, may His name be blessed, saying, "And if you offer an offering of first fruits" (Leviticus 2:14). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:22:1) is, "Every, if, in the Torah connotes optionality, except for three which are obligatory. One is, 'And if you offer an offering of first fruits.' You say it is obligatory, but perhaps it is optional. [Hence] we learn to say, 'You shall offer the offering of your first fruits.' It is obligatory, not optional." And the regulations of this commandment have already all been completely explained in the tenth chapter of Menachot. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Daily Offerings and Additional Offerings 17.)
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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)
- 11QTemple (Temple Scroll) 18:10-19:9 read it more strictly
- Qumran solar-calendar corpus (e.g. 4Q320-330; cf. 4QMMT festival rulings) The catalog describes this reception as: solar calendar reckoning
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.162-175 (approx.) rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.250-251 paraphrased it
The New Testament
- 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 read it allegorically Christ as 'firstfruits' (aparchē) of the resurrected, drawing on the firstfruits-sheaf imagery
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.