Remember what Amalek did to you by the way as you came out of Egypt;
To remember what Amalek did to Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
זָכוֹר אֵת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂה לְךָ עֲמָלֵק בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶם מִמִּצְרָיִם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לזכור מה שעשה לנו עמלק בהקדימו להרע לנו, ולשנוא אותו בכל עת ועת ונעורר הנפשות במאמרים להלחם בו ונזרז העם לשנוא אותו עד שלא תשכח המצוה ולא תחלש שנאתו ותחסר מהנפשות עם אורך הזמן. והוא אמרו יתעלה זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק יכול בלבבך כשהוא אומר לא תשכח הרי שכחת הלב אמור הא מה אני מקיים זכור שתהא שנאתו בפיך, הלא תראה שמואל בהתחילו לעשות המצוה הזאת איך עשה שהוא זכר תחלה מעשהו הרע ואחר כך צוה להרגו. והוא אמרו יתברך פקדתי את אשר עשה עמלק לישראל. (כי תצא, הלכות מלכים פ"ה):
That is that He commanded us to remember what Amalek did to us in its coming forward to do us evil, to hate it at all times, to arouse the spirits with statements to fight with it and to make the nation alacritous to hate it - such that the commandment not be forgotten with [the passing of] so much time. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Remember what Amalek did to you" (Deuteronomy 25:17). Perhaps only in your heart? When it states, "you shall not forget," behold that is forgetting of the heart. So what do I establish [with] "Remember?" That hatred for it be in your mouth. Do you not see - that at the beginning of Shmuel's doing this commandment - how he first mentioned its evil acts and [only] then did he command to kill them? And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "I have remembered what Amalek did to Israel" (I Samuel 15:2). (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Position uncertain
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
- Pesiqta Rabbati 12 expanded it homiletically
- Tanḥuma Ki Tetze 9-10 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Ant. 6.131-155 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative enactment
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 VTE curse formulas call for blotting out the name and seed of treaty-breakers from the land — employing the same conceptual vocabulary of name-erasure that characterizes the Amalek memory mandate, but as a curse against the disloyal rather than a commanded act of faithful obedience Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary curse formulae invoking extirpation of name and seed (adê of Esarhaddon; SAA 2 no. 6, curse section) 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.
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UDHR Articles 18-19
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment requires the active cultivation of a specific collective memory — perpetual enmity toward a defined group — as a religious obligation; freedom of conscience principles protect individuals' right to form their own beliefs and associations, and mandating a particular adversarial historical orientation as binding religious duty raises a structural tension even where no coercive enforcement mechanism is specified.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The addressee class is specified as male (*addressee_class: male*), creating a gender-differentiated religious obligation; modern gender equality norms treat the imposition of distinct communal duties based solely on sex as presumptively discriminatory.