Three times in a year all of your males shall appear before Yahweh your God in the place which he chooses: in the feast of unleavened bread, in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of booths. They shall not appear before Yahweh empty.
To appear before God at the Temple on the three pilgrim festivals
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שָׁלוֹשׁ פְּעָמִים בַּשָּׁנָה יֵרָאֶה כָל־זְכוּרְךָ אֶת־פְּנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחָר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להראות ברגלים, והוא אמרו יתעלה שלש פעמים בשנה יראה כל זכורך. וענין זאת המצוה שיעלה אדם למקדש עם כל בן זכר שיהיה לו שיוכל ללכת ברגליו יקריב קרבן עולה בראיתו והוא הנקרא עולת ראיה. וכבר קדם לנו אמרם שלש מצות וכו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו רוצה לומר מצות ראיה במסכת חגיגה. והיא גם כן אינה נוהגת בנשים ואין חייבות בה. (ראה, קרבנות הלכות חגיגה פ"א):
And that is that He commanded us to appear [at the Temple] on festivals. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying "Three times a year all your males shall appear" (Deuteronomy 16:16). And the content of this commandment is that a man should ascend to the Temple, with every male son that he has who is able to walk on his own feet, and offer a burnt-offering upon his appearance - and this is called a sight-offering. And we have already mentioned their saying (Chagigah 6b), "Three commandments are practiced, etc." And the regulations of this commandment - meaning the commandment of appearance - have already been explained in Tractate Chagigah. And also this do women not practice, and they are not obligated in it. (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Festival Offering 1.)
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.
- 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite As the catalog records it: inoperative no temple
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 (11Q19) cols. 17-29 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Shir HaShirim Rabbah 4:2 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.68-70 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.203-204 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 2:41-42 affirmed it Jesus' parents go to Jerusalem yearly for Passover, reflecting the pilgrimage custom
- John 7:2-10 affirmed it narrative of pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Sukkot
- Acts 2:1-5 affirmed it Shavuot pilgrimage assembly in Jerusalem
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.