You shall fear Yahweh your God. You shall serve him. You shall cling to him, and you shall swear by his name.
To cleave to those who know and serve God
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּבוֹ תִדְבָּק
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להתחבר עם החכמים ולהתיחד עמהם ולהתמיד בישיבתם בכל אופן מאופני העבודה והחברה במאכל ובמשתה והעסק כדי שיגיע לנו להדמות במעשיהם ולהאמין האמתיות מדבריהם. והוא אמרו יתעלה ובו תדבק וכבר נכפל זה הצווי גם כן ולדבקה בו. ובא בספרי ולדבקה בו הדבק בחכמים ותלמידיהם. וכן הביאו ראיה על זה חיוב האדם לישא בת תלמיד חכם ולהאכיל תלמידי חכמים ולתת להם עסק מאמרו ובו תדבק ואמרו וכי אפשר לו לאדם לידבק בשכינה והא כתיב כי ה' אלהיך אש אוכלה הוא אלא כל המשיא בתו לתלמיד חכם והנושא בת תלמיד חכם והמהנה תלמיד חכם מנכסיו מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו נדבק בשכינה. (בפרשת עקב, מדע הלכות דעות פרק ו'):
That is that He commanded us to associate with the sages, to gather with them and to constantly be involved with them in all manner of work and interaction - in eating and drinking and business, so that it comes to us to imitate their actions and believe the truth of their words. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "and to Him shall you cling" (Deuteronomy 10:20). And this command has also already been repeated - "and to cling to Him" (Deuteronomy 11:22). And in the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 49:2), it appears, "'And to cling to Him' - cling to the sages and their students." And they accordingly brought a proof about this obligation of a person - to marry the daughter of a Torah scholar, to feed Torah scholars and to give them business - from His saying, "and to Him shall you cling": And they said, "And is it possible for a person to cling to the Divine Presence? And behold, it is written (Deuteronomy 4:24), 'For the Lord, your God, is a consuming fire!' Rather, anyone who marries his daughter to a Torah scholar, or who marries the daughter of a Torah scholar or who benefits a Torah scholar - Scripture considers it as if he clung to the Divine presence." (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Human Dispositions 6.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
Two readings, side by side
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this is one of them.
In the traditional Jewish reading How the Jewish legal (halakhic) tradition reads and defends this commandment, in its own developed voice — the classical reasons given for the commandments (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).
The tradition reads “and to Him you shall cleave” as a duty kept by attaching oneself to those who know and serve God, since one cannot cling to the Divine directly.
Maimonides counts the command to cleave to God and explains that, since one cannot literally attach to the Divine Presence, it is kept by attaching to the sages and their students — marrying into their families, dealing with them, and keeping their company — so that one is drawn toward their knowledge and conduct.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 6:2; Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 6 (12th c.)
The Talmud asks how one can cleave to God, who is a consuming fire, and answers that the command is kept by cleaving to Torah scholars — supporting them and joining oneself to them is accounted as cleaving to the Divine Presence.
Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 111b (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 111b — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
In the source’s own words — Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 111b:
(Is it possible to 'cleave' to the Divine Presence concerning which) it is written, “For Hashem your God is a devouring fire?”
But [the meaning is this:] Any man who marries his daughter to a scholar, or carries on a trade on behalf of scholars, or benefits scholars from his estate is regarded by Torah as if he had cleaved to the Divine Presence.
On this passage: The passage names three concrete acts: marrying one’s daughter to a scholar, carrying on trade on their behalf, and benefiting them from one’s estate.
English: Sefaria Community Translation (CC0) — a volunteer translation, reproduced as it stands. Via Sefaria; translator’s notes omitted.
Rabbinic citations here link to the source text at Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. Where a public-domain or CC0 English translation — one anyone may reuse — of the exact passage cited has been verified and is short enough to set out in full, the passage is also reproduced here in the source’s own words; where it is not, the citation says which of those conditions it missed. Which passages are reproduced is a matter of licensing, length and verification — never of how much a source matters.
Modern critical scholarship How modern academic biblical scholarship reads this text — the source-critical and form-critical school. Its hedges are shown as it states them; nothing here is presented as settled fact.
Modern source-critical scholarship assigns this text to the Deuteronomic source (D).
Scholarly confidence in this reading: scholarly consensus.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against Worship of and allegiance to other gods; the verse's loyalty cluster (fear/serve/cleave/swear) polemically demands exclusive attachment to YHWH against syncretistic or rival-cult adherence, mirroring the ancient Near Eastern treaty demand that vassals remain 'attached' to a single suzerain (the treaty-loyalty analysis associated with Weinfeld and McCarthy, a widely-held though still-debated comparative position)..
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 1QHa (Hodayot) read it spiritually
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy 49 expanded it homiletically
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Beshalach (Shirata 3) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Posteritate Caini 12 read it allegorically
The New Testament
- 1 Corinthians 6:17 reinterpreted it 'He who is joined (kollōmenos, from kollaō) to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him' — applies cleaving language to union with Christ
- Romans 12:9 reinterpreted it 'cleaving (kollōmenoi, from kollaō) to what is good' generalizes the cleaving imperative ethically; lexical/thematic resonance rather than a direct citation of Deut 10:20
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties exclusive loyalty / undivided allegiance to the suzerain (the stipulation to love the king as oneself and tolerate no rival) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence lines 266–268 ('you will love Assurbanipal as yourselves') Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.
Deuteronomy 10:20 states, "YHWH your God you shall fear, Him you shall serve, to Him you shall cleave (וּבוֹ תִדְבָּק), and by His name you shall swear." The verb דבק ('to cling, to cleave, to stick to') is a remarkably physical, intimate term — it is used in Genesis 2:24 for a man 'cleaving' to his wife and in 2 Kings 5:27 for leprosy 'clinging' to Gehazi. The idea of 'cleaving to God' (דבקות, devekut) raised an obvious problem for the rabbis: how can a mortal 'cling' to a being described as 'a consuming fire' (Deut 4:24)? The Talmud (b. Ketubot 111b) resolves this by redirecting the commandment: cleaving to God means cleaving to *Torah scholars* — marrying a scholar's daughter, dining with scholars, doing business with scholars. Maimonides follows this reading, counting the commandment as an obligation to associate with the wise (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive #6).
In its original Deuteronomic context, 'cleaving to YHWH' is part of the loyalty vocabulary we have already encountered: fear, serve, cleave, swear. These are covenantal allegiance terms. דבק in Deuteronomy (also 11:22, 13:5, 30:20) consistently means steadfast, unwavering loyalty to YHWH as opposed to other gods — staying 'stuck' to the covenant partner. The physical connotations of the word are significant: this is not a bloodless intellectual assent but a tenacious, embodied commitment. The closest ancient Near Eastern parallel might be the Akkadian dabāqu, which shares the same Semitic root and means 'to stick, to glue, to join together,' used both literally and metaphorically for close attachment. In treaty contexts, remaining 'attached' to one's suzerain rather than defecting was the cardinal virtue.
The rabbinic reinterpretation — cleaving to scholars rather than to God directly — is a fascinating theological move that addresses a genuine conceptual difficulty while also serving a social function: it legitimates the authority of the rabbinic class by making association with them a biblical commandment. Maimonides further develops this by specifying that cleaving to the wise includes marrying their daughters and supporting them financially (Mishneh Torah, De'ot 6:2). This is transparent social engineering dressed in theological garb, but it is also a sincere attempt to operationalize an otherwise impossibly abstract command. If one cannot literally cling to God, the next best thing is to surround oneself with people who embody divine wisdom.
The later mystical tradition, particularly Hasidism, reclaimed the literal sense of devekut as direct communion with God, making it the central aspiration of the spiritual life. The Baal Shem Tov (18th century) and his disciples taught that every act — eating, working, even mundane tasks — could become an occasion for devekut if performed with the right intention. This represents a full circle from the Deuteronomic loyalty term through the rabbinic institutional redirect back to an intensely personal, experiential understanding of 'cleaving to God.' The concept also resonated in Christian mystical traditions (the idea of 'union with God') and in Islamic Sufism (fana, annihilation of self in the divine), though these developed independently from different textual and cultural roots.