Deuteronomy 6:9
in Deuteronomy 6Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.
KJV
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
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This verse in Deuteronomy 6
Commentary
5 notes on this verseChrist blames the Pharisees, not for wearing them, but for affecting to have them broader than other people's, Matt. xxiii. But when Bibles came to be common among them there was less occasion for this expedient.
This site's exposition
Tie them as reminders on your hands
on Deuteronomy 6:8-9
Jewish practice took the instruction literally and produced the tefillin and the mezuzah. Matthew 23:5 speaks of phylacteries being made broad, so the practice was established well before the first century.
This site's exposition
on the doorposts of your houses
The doorposts mark the household and the gates mark the town. So the words stand at the threshold of private and public life alike.
The record, by era
The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thine house, and on thy gates.
The Nineteenth Century1 voice
Write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates - The Jews, forgetting the spirit and design of this precept, used these things as superstitious people do amulets and charms, and supposed, if they had these passages of Scripture written upon slips of pure parchment, wrapped round their foreheads, tied to their arm, or nailed to their door-posts, that they should then be delivered from every evil!
How the passage was read
On Deuteronomy 6:4-9On Deuteronomy 6:4-9
The confession Israel still prays twice a day
Verses 4 and 5 are the Shema (Hebrew for “Hear,” the passage's first word): “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” It is the closest thing Judaism has to a creed, prayed morning and evening by observant Jews to this day; the Mishnah, the first code of Jewish oral law (about AD 200), opens its very first page with the question of when the evening Shema is recited (Berakhot 1:1). When a lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is greatest, His answer begins with this text (Matthew 22:37).
The commands to bind these words “on your hand” and “between your eyes” and to write them “on your doorposts” are kept physically. Tefillin (called phylacteries in the Gospels) are two small leather boxes containing Scripture passages, bound with straps to the arm and forehead during weekday morning prayer. A mezuzah is a small case fixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home holding this passage on parchment. Jesus never criticizes either practice; His woe falls on tefillin made extra wide to be seen (Matthew 23:5), ostentation in a good thing, not the thing itself.
What the Jewish commentators add
On the verses either side of this one
AND IT SHALL BE, WHEN THE ETERNAL THY G-D SHALL BRING THEE etc. He mentions here that, with the increase of beneficence, Israel [i.e., each individual Israelite] should remember the days of his affliction and of his anguish, 263 Lamentations:7.
This section is reception history: how the passage was read and kept in the Jewish tradition. Where a reading parts from an essential of the Christian faith, the section says so at that point.
Sources: Mishnah Berakhot 1:1 (the Shema's recitation, the Mishnah's opening subject) · Mishnah Menachot 4:1 (tefillin of arm and head, each valid without the other)
Texts and citation data: Sefaria; each excerpt follows its version’s licence. 5 further sources are cited on this chapter that carry no English text this site may quote or only restate the verse.
The words behind it
5 Hebrew wordsEvery Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.
| Hebrew | Sound | Meaning | Word study | In the Bible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם | ukhetavtam | and you will write them | H3789 → | 224 times |
| עַל־ | ʾal- | on | H5921 → | 5755 times |
| מְזוּזֹ֥ת | mezuzot | [the] doorposts of | H4201 → | |
| בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ | beitekha | house your | H1004 → | 2046 times |
| וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ ס | uvishareikha | and on gates your | H8179 → | 374 times |
וּכְתַבְתָּ֛םand you will write them
ukhetavtamH3789 →224 times
עַל־on
ʾal-H5921 →5755 times
מְזוּזֹ֥ת[the] doorposts of
mezuzotH4201 →
בֵּיתֶ֖ךָhouse your
beitekhaH1004 →2046 times
וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ סand on gates your
uvishareikhaH8179 →374 times
A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.
The walk
8 stopsEach card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.
Through
Habakkuk 2:2Then the LORD answered me: “Write down this vision and clearly inscribe it on tablets, so that a herald may run with it.
it leads to
- Isaiah 30:8
Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the days to come, a witness forever and ever.
- Deuteronomy 31:22
So that very day Moses wrote down this song and taught it to the Israelites.
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Revelation 14:13
And I heard a voice from heaven telling me to write, “Blessed are the dead—those who die in the Lord from this moment on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors,…
- Revelation 1:18–19
the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.
- Revelation 21:5–8
And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.”
- Isaiah 30:8
Through
Isaiah 30:8Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the days to come, a witness forever and ever.
it leads to
- Isaiah 8:1
Then the LORD said to me, “Take a large scroll and write on it with an ordinary stylus: Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
- Habakkuk 2:2
Then the LORD answered me: “Write down this vision and clearly inscribe it on tablets, so that a herald may run with it.
- Jeremiah 51:60
Jeremiah had written on a single scroll about all the disaster that would come upon Babylon—all these words that had been written concerning Babylon.
- Isaiah 8:1
Where this verse is studied
On this page
Studies15
About Deuteronomy
This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763) and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.