What is the difference between chukim and mishpatim?

Jewish tradition divides the Torah’s commandments into several categories, and chukim (statutes) versus mishpatim (ordinances) is one of the oldest and most discussed. Mishpatim are laws whose rationale is evident to human reason — do not steal, do not murder, return a lost object — the kind of ethical and civil law most societies would recognize as sensible even without revelation. Chukim are commandments whose reason is not self-evident, decrees that stand on divine authority alone: the prohibition on mixing wool and linen (shatnez), the details of kosher slaughter, and above all the para aduma, the red heifer ritual, which the Torah itself (Numbers 19) treats as a paradox — it purifies the impure while rendering the pure priest who administers it impure. Rashi’s view, drawing on Midrash, is that chukim are decrees the “evil inclination” and the nations of the world mock as irrational, and that a Jew should perform them simply because “I am the Lord” has decreed it (Leviticus 18:4) — obedience without needing to understand first. Rambam, in the Guide for the Perplexed, argued the opposite: every mitzvah has a rational purpose, including the chukim; we may simply not yet have recovered or fully grasped their reasoning, and he offered his own explanations for para aduma and other chukim. Later authorities like Ramban split the difference, treating the distinction as one of degree rather than kind — mishpatim are reasons we have grasped, chukim are reasons we have not yet grasped. The category matters less as a rulebook and more as a test case for a bigger question the tradition keeps returning to: whether obedience needs to be understood in order to be meaningful.