In the second month, on the fourteenth day at evening they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
To eat the second Passover offering with unleavened bread and bitter herbs
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
עַל־מַצּוֹת וּמְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לאכול בשר פסח שני בליל חמשה עשר מאייר על מצה ומרור, והוא אמרו על מצות ומרורים יאכלוהו. ומשפטי מצוה זו גם כן התבארו בפסחים. ואמרו שאין הנשים חייבות בה כי כמו ששחיטתו אינה חובה להן כמו שבארנו כן אכילתו אינה חובה בלי ספק. (בהעלותך, קרבן פסח פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to eat from the meat of the second-Pesach offering on the night of the fifteenth of Iyar over matzah and bitter herbs. And that is His saying, "upon matzoh and bitter herbs shall they eat it" (Numbers 9:11). And they said that women are not obligated in it. For just as its slaughter is not obligatory for them - as we explained (in the previous commandment) - so too is its eating, without a doubt, not obligatory. (See Parashat Behaalotecha; Mishneh Torah, Paschal 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 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 Not binding
- 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.
Josephus
- Ant. 3.248-249 carried a parallel
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.