A person shaped by this mitzvah becomes less reactive when hurt. Many acts of revenge are not dramatic. They appear in cooler forms: withholding help, speaking sharply, excluding someone, or quietly enjoying the chance to “even the score.” The Torah trains a person to notice that these moments are spiritually serious. What feels like balance is often just injury returning in a new form.

That changes inner structure. Instead of letting past hurt decide present action, a person learns to act from principle rather than from the memory of insult. He becomes less controlled by what others did to him and more governed by what Hashem asks of him now. That creates a more ordered and freer inner life.

Emotionally, this mitzvah is difficult because revenge promises relief. It offers the feeling that dignity has been restored by making the other person feel what one felt. But the relief is thin and short. Torah points toward something stronger: not pretending the hurt never happened, but refusing to become the kind of person whose goodness depends on being treated well first. Over time, this builds real strength. A person becomes steadier, less ruled by resentment, and more capable of acting from clarity rather than wounded pride.

Rambam

• Source: Sefer HaMitzvos, Lo Taaseh 304; Mishneh Torah, Hilchos De’os 7:7
• Rambam defines revenge through the classic everyday case of refusing a favor because a similar favor was previously denied. His contribution is especially important because he shows how ordinary and subtle revenge can be. The issur is not limited to aggression. It includes measured retaliation in common human dealings, where a person feels justified in “returning” what was done to him.

Sefer HaChinuch

• Source: Sefer HaChinuch, mitzvah of לא תקום
• Sefer HaChinuch explains that revenge is a destructive trait, and people of understanding know that events are not governed by the offender alone. Once a person internalizes that everything unfolds under Hashem’s world, he becomes less consumed by the urge to repay insult personally. The Chinuch’s contribution is that revenge is not only prohibited behavior. It reflects a small and wounded way of seeing reality.

Gemara

• Source: Yoma 23a
• The Gemara gives the classic illustration of revenge and distinguishes it from bearing a grudge. This sugya is foundational because it defines the mitzvah with practical clarity. Revenge means withholding present good because of prior hurt, even in minor daily matters.

Gemara

• Source: Rosh Hashanah 17a
• Chazal praise the one who is מעביר על מידותיו — who lets go of personal claims — and teach that Heaven relates to him with similar mercy. This teaching deepens the mitzvah by showing that surrendering revenge is not passive weakness. It is a spiritually elevated form of self-mastery that opens a person to a different kind of life.

Sifra

• Source: Sifra, Kedoshim, to Leviticus 19:18
• The Sifra reads לא תקום through concrete human interaction and defines the prohibition in terms of retaliatory refusal. Its contribution is textual precision. The Torah is addressing the exact place where resentment becomes conduct.

Midrash

• Source: Midrashic teachings on unity, dignity, and restraint in Israel
• Midrashic teachings on interpersonal life in Israel repeatedly show that a people cannot remain whole when each person becomes the private collector of wrongs and the private dispenser of payback. Within that framework, the prohibition of revenge protects covenantal life from being overtaken by injury and retaliation.

Rashi

• Source: Rashi to Leviticus 19:18
• Rashi explains the verse with the classic example of one person refusing a request in response to an earlier refusal. His contribution is peshat clarity. Revenge is defined by action rooted in remembered hurt.

Ramban

• Source: Ramban to Leviticus 19:18
• Ramban places the prohibition within the larger chain of interpersonal corruption that includes hatred and grudge-bearing. His nuance is that revenge is not an isolated act. It grows out of a heart that has not released injury and now seeks expression through conduct.

Ibn Ezra

• Source: Ibn Ezra to Leviticus 19:18
• Ibn Ezra keeps the verse direct and practical. His contribution is that the Torah does not permit a person to answer injury by reproducing it. The wrong of the first person does not become the license of the second.

Sforno

• Source: Sforno to Leviticus 19:18
• Sforno explains the mitzvah in terms of preserving proper social order and refusing to let personal pain become the basis of one’s actions. His nuance is that a person must rise above reactive conduct and act from what is right, not from what was done to him.

Rabbeinu Bachya

• Source: Rabbeinu Bachya to Leviticus 19:18
• Rabbeinu Bachya underscores the inward damage caused by revenge. Once a person organizes himself around repayment, he is no longer free. His emotional life remains tied to the offender, and his conduct becomes governed by resentment rather than by Torah.

Abarbanel

• Source: Abarbanel to Kedoshim
• Abarbanel situates the prohibition within the Torah’s larger program of forming a society where conflict does not endlessly multiply. His contribution is structural. Revenge is forbidden because it keeps wrong moving forward instead of allowing moral life to recover and stabilize.

Kuzari

• Source: Kuzari, on covenantal peoplehood and Divine-centered living
• The Kuzari’s broader framework helps explain why revenge is spiritually unworthy. A covenantal people is not meant to live by ego-defense alone. Life before Hashem changes how injury is processed, because the person no longer treats himself as the final center of judgment and repayment.

Maharal

• Source: Maharal, on order, anger, and the distortion of interpersonal life
• Maharal’s conceptual framework helps show that revenge deforms social order by making each hurt the cause of another hurt. Instead of restoring balance, it deepens imbalance. The prohibition therefore protects not only personal virtue but the structure of human relationship.

Ramban

• Source: Ramban to Leviticus 19:18
• On the conceptual plane, Ramban helps show that revenge is the outward movement of an inward refusal to release insult. The mitzvah seeks not only external restraint but a reordering of how the self carries injury.

Abarbanel

• Source: Abarbanel to Kedoshim
• Abarbanel’s system-level contribution is that holiness requires a people who do not govern themselves through personal retaliation. Torah society cannot be built when each person becomes a private enforcer of remembered pain.

Shulchan Aruch

• Source: De’ah and conduct-based halachic tradition as preserved through practical rulings on לא תקום
• The halachic system treats revenge as a real prohibition in ordinary dealings. In practical terms, one may not refuse a favor, help, or kindness because the other person once refused him in a similar matter.

Rema

• Source: Halachic tradition on interpersonal conduct and prohibited retaliation
• The Rema preserves the seriousness of these interpersonal prohibitions within lived halachic life. Social convention does not soften the issur. What many people call fairness may still be revenge if the present refusal is driven by the memory of past refusal.

Nosei Keilim

• Source: Commentarial tradition on Hilchos De’os and the laws of revenge and grudge-bearing
• The halachic tradition sharpens the distinction between revenge and grudge-bearing while showing how closely they are linked. The practical takeaway is that Torah requires more than restraint from dramatic retaliation. It requires cleansing ordinary conduct from payback logic.

Chasam Sofer

• Source: Teachings on middos and Torah discipline in interpersonal life
• Chasam Sofer deepens the seriousness of revenge by showing that Torah character is tested not only in the Beis Midrash or in ritual devotion, but in the instinctive handling of insult. A person who retaliates over small hurts reveals how fragile his inner discipline still is.

Netziv

• Source: HaEmek Davar to Kedoshim
• Netziv expands the prohibition into the life of covenantal society. A people living under Torah cannot let daily life be driven by chains of personal repayment. Mutual life requires restraint strong enough to stop hurt from reproducing itself.

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch

• Source: Hirsch to Leviticus 19:18
• Hirsch explains that revenge makes another person’s wrongdoing the model for one’s own conduct. His contribution is especially sharp. The moment a person retaliates, he has allowed the other’s failure to shape his own moral form.

Malbim

• Source: Malbim to Leviticus 19:18
• Malbim’s precise distinctions help clarify that revenge and grudge-bearing are not identical. Revenge is the act of repayment; grudge-bearing is the sustained inner holding of the wrong. His contribution strengthens the halachic and conceptual precision of the mitzvah.

Rav Kook

• Source: Writings on inner refinement, love of Israel, and moral elevation
• Rav Kook broadens the mitzvah by showing that a soul attached to higher holiness becomes less interested in lowering itself into cycles of injury and reply. The more a person lives from a higher inner place, the less revenge feels powerful or necessary.

Meshech Chochmah

• Source: Meshech Chochmah to Kedoshim
• Meshech Chochmah deepens the relationship between holiness and restraint in personal conflict. Revenge may feel like justice to the injured person, but Torah sees that it usually intensifies ego rather than serving truth.

Baal Shem Tov

• Source: Teachings on seeing Hashem’s hand in what comes to a person
• The Baal Shem Tov’s inner contribution is that a person should not become trapped in the illusion that another human being is the full source of his pain or his destiny. Once Hashem’s providence becomes more real, the urge to retaliate begins to weaken.

Tanya

• Source: Tanya, on ego, the soul, and interpersonal refinement
• Tanya helps explain that revenge grows where bodily ego and personal insult dominate consciousness. The more a person lives from the soul, the less he experiences every slight as a demand for repayment. The mitzvah thus becomes part of freeing the self from wounded ego.

Sfas Emes

• Source: Sfas Emes on Kedoshim and inner wholeness
• Sfas Emes presents holiness as the refusal to let outer events control the deepest orientation of the person. Revenge hands that control away. The inner avodah of this mitzvah is to remain connected to a higher center even after being hurt.

Ramchal

• Source: Mesillas Yesharim, on נקיות and mastery over reaction
• Ramchal’s framework makes clear that refined avodah requires mastery over reactive emotion. Revenge feels justified because it presents itself as balance, but deeper cleanliness of soul reveals it as ego answering ego. The mitzvah trains a person toward that cleaner vision.

This mitzvah appears in Parashas Kedoshim beside the prohibition of bearing a grudge and the command to love one’s fellow. That setting is essential. The Torah is not merely forbidding a single bad reaction. It is building a whole interpersonal system. First, one may not take revenge; second, one may not continue holding the wrong in his heart; finally, he is commanded to love his fellow. The background reveals the movement clearly: Torah does not want a person frozen in injury, then dressed in outward politeness. It seeks a deeper repair in which payback is relinquished, resentment is not preserved, and relationship is no longer governed by remembered hurt. In the Rambam’s canonical count used by this guide, Mitzvah 20 — Not to take revenge stands as a key part of that interpersonal architecture of holiness.