You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
To affix a mezuzah to the doorposts of one's house
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל־מְזוּזֹת בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לעשות מזוזה והוא אמרו יתעלה וכתבתם על מזוזות ביתך. והנה נכפל הצווי הזה. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בפ"ג ממנחות. (בפרשת ואתחנן, עקב, אהבה הלכות תפילין פרק ה'):
That is that He commanded us to make a mezuzah. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Deuteronomy 6:9). And note that this command was repeated; and they have already explained the laws of this commandment in the third chapter of Menachot. (See Parashat Vaetchanan and Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Tefillin, Mezuzah and the Torah Scroll 5.)
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 Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Binding, with modification
- Karaite Rejected
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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)
- Tefillin and mezuzah manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 (4Q128-4Q155 group, including mezuzah texts) and 8QMez (8Q4) affirmed it
Rabbinic aggadah
- y. Peah 1:1 / Genesis Rabbah analogues on Onkelos and the mezuzah expanded it homiletically
- Deuteronomy Rabbah on Deut 6:9 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Spec. Leg. 4 (treatment of the Shema-inscription commands; precise section uncertain) rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.213 affirmed it
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.