and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
To recite the Shema prayer morning and evening
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לקרוא קריאת שמע ערבית ושחרית והוא אמרו ודברת בם. וכבר נתבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת ברכות (דף כ"א) ושם נתבאר דקריאת שמע דאורייתא. וכתוב בתוספתא כשם שנתנה תורה קבע לקריאת שמע כך נתנו חכמים זמן לתפלה, רוצה לומר שזמני התפלה אינם מן התורה אמנם חיוב התפלה עצמה מן התורה כמו שבארנו, וחכמים ז"ל סדרו להם זמנים. וזהו ענין אמרם (ברכות כ"ו:) תפלות כנגד תמידים תקנו, רוצה לומר שתקנו זמניהם כפי זמני הקרבן. ומצוה זו אין הנשים חייבות בה. (בפרשת ואתחנן, אהבה הלכות קריאת שמע פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to read the recitation of Shema in the evening and the morning. And that is His saying, "and you shall speak about them" (Deuteronomy 6:4). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Berakhot; and there (Berakhot 21a), it is explained that the recitation of Shema is [an obligation] from the Torah. And it is written in the Tosefta (Tosefta Berakhot 3:1), "Just like the Torah established [a set time for] the recitation of Shema, so too did the Sages establish a time for prayer." This means to say that the times of prayer are not from the Torah - though the actual obligation to pray is from the Torah, as we explained (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandments 5) - and the Sages, may their memory be blessed, arranged times for them. And this is the content of their saying (Berakhot 26b), "They established the prayers corresponding to the daily sacrifices" - meaning, that they fixed their times according to the times of the sacrifices. And women are not obligated in this commandment. (See Parashat Vaetchanan; Mishneh Torah, Reading the Shema 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: an exhortation
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 Not binding
- Karaite Binding
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)
- 4QPhyl (4Q128-148); 1QPhyl affirmed it
- 1QS (Community Rule) liturgical structuring of daily recitation carried a parallel
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy 31-34 expanded it homiletically
- Genesis Rabbah 98:3 expanded it homiletically
- Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:35 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.137-142 rationalized it Philo discusses the continual memorization and rehearsal of the law generally rather than the Shema liturgy as such
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.212 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Mark 12:29-30 affirmed it Jesus cites the Shema (Deut 6:4-5) as the foremost commandment
- Matthew 22:37 affirmed it cites Deut 6:5 as the great commandment, paired with Lev 19:18; abbreviates Mark by omitting the 'Hear O Israel' preamble
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 112:1-4 (Surat al-Ikhlas) The catalog describes this reception as: thematic affinity
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 demand for exclusive, internalized loyalty to the sovereign, to be taught to children and spoken of continually Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence cf. §4 and §§24-26 (paragraph numbering approximate) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties twice-daily or continual verbal affirmation of exclusive loyalty to the suzerain parallels the Deuteronomic demand for ongoing verbal recitation of YHWH's lordship morning and evening Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary preamble and stipulations (exclusive loyalty clauses, adê body) Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (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.