The Rambam's Fourteenth Principle: Punishments count as positive mitzvos

For the purposes of this principle, there are two types of mitzvos: those for which one is punished and those for which one is not punished. (That doesn’t make the non-punishment type optional; they’re still obligatory. It’s just between us and God.)

Types of punishments vary. There are mitzvos for which violation warrants spiritual punishments like kareis (excision) or premature death. There are monetary fines. There are sacrifices. And there are physical punishments like lashes and capital punishment. For someone convicted of a capital crime, there are four forms of execution: stoning (skilah), burning (sreifah), beheading (hereg) and strangulation (chenek). The Rambam informs us that imposing each type of these penalties when called for constitutes a separate positive mitzvah.

To support this view, the Rambam cites the Talmud in Sanhedrin. First it states (49b), “This is the mitzvah of those who are stoned,” then it asks how to fulfill the “mitzvos” of those who are subject to the other forms of capital punishment (52a-b). Administering lashes when called for is likewise a mitzvah.

The Rambam cautions us that applying the punishment when necessary is the mitzvah, not each case of application. In other words, it is a mitzvah to stone a sorcerer, an idolator and a Sabbath desecrator; it is not one mitzvah to stone a sorcerer, a second to stone the idolator, etc. There are those who have counted them this way, but it is clearly wrong. If we were meant to count the cases separately, we should also count each scenario in which lashes were administered. If we did, then counting each case of lashes as a positive mitzvah would make the number of positive mitzvos exceed 400 – far, far too many!

This is also true for sacrifices. Depending on the type of transgression, one might bring a chatas (sin offering), an asham (guilt offering), an asham talui (conditional guilt offering), or a korban oleh v’yoreid (variable offering). To bring each type of sacrifice when appropriate is its own mitzvah, not each individual case that might call for a sacrifice.

The Rambam is mystified at the ways in which some of his predecessors erred in this principle. He finds one situation particularly baffling; a certain codifier counted as mitzvos 32 cases of spiritual punishments (kareis or premature death) that God would carry out Himself. The Rambam is incredulous that this author counted these as 32 “mitzvos” apparently incumbent not on us but on God!

Finally, the Rambam tells us that, with two exceptions, any action that carries a penalty of kareis or capital punishment is perforce a negative mitzvah. (The exceptions are failure to offer the korban Pesach or to have one’s self circumcised, which are positive mitzvos.) So, aside from those two cases, whenever the Torah says, “the one who does X will be stoned” or “the one who does Y shall be cut off,” we know that X and Y are negative mitzvos. If the actual prohibition is not clear in the Torah, it may be deduced using the hermeneutical principles, but it’s definitely there somewhere.