“Aaron shall come into the sanctuary with a young bull for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.
To perform the Yom Kippur service in the prescribed manner
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בְּזֹאת יָבֹא אַהֲרֹן אֶל־הַקֹּדֶשׁ בְּפַר בֶּן־בָּקָר לְחַטָּאת וְאַיִל לְעֹלָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לעשות עבודת היום, כלומר כלל כל הקרבנות והוידוין המתוקנין ביום צום כפור כדי שיכופר בהם כל העונות כמו שבא בכתוב, והיא העבודה הכתובה באחרי מות. והראיה על היות הכלל כלו מצוה אחת אמרם במסכת יומא (דף ס') כל מעשה יום הכפורים האמור על הסדר הקדים מעשה לחבירו לא עשה כלום. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת יומא. (אחרי מות, הלכות יוה"כ פ"ד):
That is that He commanded us to do the service of the day - meaning, the sum of all of the sacrifices and the confessions arranged for the fast of Yom Kippur, in order for them to atone for all of our transgressions, as it appears in Scripture. And this is the service that is written in Achrei Mot (Leviticus 16). And the proof about the sum of all of it being [only] one commandment is their saying in Tractate Yoma (Yoma 60a), "The whole process of Yom Kippur must be in order. If one performed one of the actions before another, he has not done anything." And all of the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Yoma. (See Parashat Achrei Mot; Mishneh Torah, Service on the Day of Atonement 4).
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 As the catalog records it: binding in principle suspended
- Conservative As the catalog records it: binding in principle suspended
- 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)
- 11Q19 (Temple Scroll) 25-27 The catalog describes this reception as: harmonizing systematization
- 4Q180-181 (Ages of Creation) The catalog describes this reception as: thematic parallel (Azazel/Watchers tradition)
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 21:4-11 expanded it homiletically
- Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 46 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.186-188 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.240-243 carried a parallel
The New Testament
- Hebrews 9:6-14 reinterpreted it Yom Kippur entry into the Holy of Holies typologized as Christ's once-for-all entry into the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood
- Hebrews 9:24-28 reinterpreted it annual high-priestly atonement contrasted with a singular eschatological self-offering
- Romans 3:25 reinterpreted it hilastērion echoing the kapporet
The Church Fathers
- Epistle of Barnabas, Barnabas 7 reinterpreted it
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 40 reinterpreted it
- Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 3.7 reinterpreted it
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 ritual texts animal loaded with impurity and driven away into the wilderness or enemy territory to eliminate ritual pollution from a community or army Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Ashella ritual (CTH 394), Pulisa ritual (CTH 407), Ambazzi ritual (CTH 391) — elimination rituals from the Boğazköy archive, distinct from the Hittite Laws code Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101, 1987), pp. 15-74
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.