“Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them that they should make themselves fringes on the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put on the fringe of each border a cord of blue.
To make fringes (tzitzit) on the corners of garments
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעָשׂוּ לָהֶם צִיצִת עַל־כַּנְפֵי בִגְדֵיהֶם לְדֹרֹתָם וְנָתְנוּ עַל־צִיצִת הַכָּנָף פְּתִיל תְּכֵלֶת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לעשות ציצית והוא אמרו יתעלה ועשו להם ציצית ונתנו על ציצית הכנף. ואינה נמנית בשתי מצות, ואף על פי שהעיקר אצלנו התכלת אינה מעכבת את הלבן והלבן אינו מעכב את התכלת, שהרי נאמר בספרי יכול שהן שתי מצות מצות תכלת ומצות לבן תלמוד לומר והיה לכם לציצית מצוה אחת היא ואינה שתי מצות. וזו אין הנשים חייבות בה כמו שהתבאר בראשון מקידושין (דף ל"ג:). וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ד ממנחות. (בפרשת שלח לך, אהבה הלכות ציצית פרק א'):
That is that He commanded us to make tzitzit (fringes). And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "to make for themselves fringes [...] let them attach to the fringe at each corner" (Numbers 15:38). And [the two colors of strings are] not counted as two commandments, even though the main understanding for us is that the blue-purple does not impede the white and the white does not impede the blue-purple. For it is said in the Sifrei, "It is possible that they are two commandments, the commandment of the white and the commandment of the blue-purple. [Hence] we learn to say (Numbers 15:39), 'That shall be your tzitzit' - it is one commandment and not two commandments." And women are not obligated in it, as is explained in the first [chapter] of Kiddushin (Kiddushin 33b). And the regulations of this commandment were already explained in the fourth chapter of Menachot. (See Parashat Shelach; Mishneh Torah, Fringes 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: 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 Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- b. Menachot 43b-44a expanded it homiletically
- Sifre Numbers 115 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.212 affirmed it Josephus paraphrases the command to attach tassels/fringes to garments as a reminder of the laws.
The New Testament
- Matthew 23:5 The catalog describes this reception as: critiqued Critiques the ostentatious lengthening of fringes (kraspeda), not the practice itself, which is presupposed as legitimate and widespread.
- Matthew 9:20 affirmed it Woman touches the kraspedon of Jesus' garment, presupposing he wore tzitzit.
- Luke 8:44 affirmed it Parallel to Matt 9:20; the fringe of Jesus' garment.
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.
- Old Babylonian / Mari legal and administrative texts garment hem (sissiktum) as a marker of personal/legal identity, impressed into clay alongside or in lieu of a seal to authorize documents; in some Mesopotamian contexts hem-related acts carry juridical force in marital and contractual settings Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence sissiktum usage (Mari letters; OB practice) ARM (Archives royales de Mari) for sissiktum attestations; cf. CAD s.v. sissiktu for lexical and juridical usage
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.