Taryag mitzvot—the 613 commandments תרי"ג מצוות
"Six hundred and thirteen commandments were said to Moses": three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, as the days of the year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commands, as the parts of the body. The Talmud gives the number; the list had to be drawn up afterwards.
The number is uttered in the Talmud by Rabbi Simlai, and uttered in passing, as something known: six hundred and thirteen commandments were said to Moses—three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, as the days of the solar year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commands, as the parts of a man (Makkot 23b). He goes on to say that the prophets reduced the commandments to a few: David to eleven, Isaiah to six, Micah to three—"to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God"—and Habakkuk to one: "the righteous shall live by his faith."
The list. The number is given; which ones, is not, and that proved no simple matter. Rambam was the first to work it out, in the Sefer haMitzvot, and he began with fourteen rules of counting: what is a commandment and what a detail; what is from the Torah and what from the sages. Ramban wrote objections to that book, and their argument is not about the number but about what may be called a commandment at all.
How it is learned. The Sefer haChinuch, by an unknown man of Barcelona, laid all six hundred and thirteen out by the weekly portions and added to each the "root of the commandment"—what it is for. That is how it still lives in people's homes.
And an honest note. Most of these commandments cannot be kept today: they concern the Temple, the offerings, the priests, the laws of the land. They are counted all the same—because the count is not a list of things to do this week but a measure of what is missing.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Makkot 23b–24a — the six hundred and thirteen commandments, the count of 365 and 248, and how the prophets reduced them to a few
- Makkot 23b — Rabbi Simlai on the number of the commandments
Rishonim
- Rambam, Sefer haMitzvot, the fourteen roots — the rules by which the list is drawn up
- Ramban, glosses on the Sefer haMitzvot — the argument over what counts as a commandment
Basis: Talmud and midrash.