⭐ תרי״ג — the six hundred and thirteenתרי״ג

Makkot 23b. R. Simlai expounded: "Six hundred and thirteen commandments were stated to Moses — three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, corresponding to the number of days in the solar year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the limbs of a person."

⭐⭐ Read that pairing again, because almost everyone gets it backwards. The positive commandments are a body. The prohibitions are a year. What you are to do is shaped like a person; what you are not to do is shaped like time passing. See taryag-limbs.

The number is a homiletical figure before it is a list. R. Simlai is preaching, not indexing, and the Talmud never enumerates the 613 anywhere. The enumerating came later and was immediately contested: there is no single agreed list, and the disagreements are on principle rather than detail. See taryag-counting.

⭐ And the same page that gives the number spends the rest of itself taking it apart — 613 down to eleven, to six, to three, to two, to one, prophet by prophet, with one rung struck out mid-descent. The Gemara supplies the count and the objection to the count in the same breath. See taryag-ladder.

⚠ This app adopts Rambam's enumeration for the browsable list, and says whose it is on every screen. A list with an author is a citation; a list without one is a forgery.