“Now therefore write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.
Each person shall write a Torah scroll for himself
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת־הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו שיהיה כל איש ממנו כותב ספר תורה לעצמו ואם כתבו בידו מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו קבלה מהר סיני, ואם אי אפשר לו לכותבו צריך שיקנהו או ישכור מי יכתבהו לו, והוא אמרו כתבו לכם את השירה הזאת. ואין מותר לכתוב אותה פרשיות פרשיות כי רצה באמרו את השירה כל התורה שכוללת זאת השירה. ולשון גמרא (סנהדרין כ"א:) אמר רבה אע"פ שהניחו לו אבותיו ספר תורה מצוה לו לכתוב משלו שנאמר כתבו לכם איתיביה אביי כותב לו ספר תורה לעצמו כדי שלא יתגאה בשל אבותיו מלך אין הדיוט לא. והיתה התשובה לא נצרכה אלא לשתי תורות כדתניא וכותב לו שתי תורות, כלומר שהפרש יש בין מלך והדיוט כי כל איש חייב לכתוב ספר תורה אחד והמלך שנים כמו שהתבאר בפרק שני מסנהדרין (שם). וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו, רוצה לומר כתיבת ספר תורה ותנאיה בפרק שלישי ממנחות ובמסכת שבת פ' ט"ז. (אתם נצבים, הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה):
That is that He commanded us that every man among us should write a Torah scroll for himself. And if he writes it with his hand, Scripture accounts it to him as if he received it at Mount Sinai. But if it is impossible for him to write it, he should buy it or hire someone to write it for him. And this is His saying, "write for yourselves this song " (Deuteronomy 31:19). And it is not permitted to write [only] sections. For when He said, "this song," He intended the whole Torah, which includes this song (of Haazinu). And the language of the Gemara (Sanhedrin 21b) is, "Rabbah said, 'Even if his ancestors left him a Torah scroll, it is a commandment to write a scroll of his own, as it is stated, "write for yourselves."' Abaye raised an objection to him (from a baraita concerning the king’s Torah scroll), '"And he writes himself a Torah scroll for himself, so that he does not become proud from the Torah scroll of his ancestors." A king, yes, but an ordinary person, no!'" And the answer was, "No, [the ruling of that baraita] was only necessary [to teach that the king is commanded to write] two Torahs; as it is taught in a baraita, 'And he must write two Torahs for himself.'" This means to say that the difference between a king and an ordinary person is that every man is obligated to write a Torah scroll, whereas a king, two - as it is explained in the second chapter of Sanhedrin. And the regulations of this commandment - meaning to say, the writing of a Torah scroll and its stipulations - have already been explained in the third chapter of Menachot and in Shabbat, Chapter 16. (See Parashat Nitzavim; Mishneh Torah, Tefillin, Mezuzah and the Torah Scroll.)
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 command embedded in narrative
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, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Rejected
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
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.
- code of hammurabi Hammurabi's law inscribed on a public stele for communal display by royal decree — the inverse of the Deuteronomic vision of individual, personal ownership of the foundational legal text Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Prologue (i 1 – v 24) and Epilogue (xlvii 1 – xlviii 19) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
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.