וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל מְזוּז֥וֹת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ
You shall write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates;
World English Bible · Public Domain
Deuteronomy 11:20
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Deuteronomy 11:20 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
You shall write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates;
Download a study sheet
One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.
This verse Autodidact and up
A passage Seminary Student
Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.
Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.
Want to remove ads?
Support Godless Engineer
Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
-
World English Bible Public Domain
You shall write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates;
-
King James Version Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:
-
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
-
World English Bible Public Domain
You shall write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates;
-
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates,
-
Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates,
-
King James Version Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:
-
American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates;
-
Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:
-
Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And thou shalt write them vpon the postes of thine house, and vpon thy gates,
-
Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Teach your children that they meditate on them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest on the way, end when thou liest down and risest up.
-
Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
and hast written them on the side-posts of thy house, and on thy gates,
-
Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and have written them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
-
Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
You will write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates,
-
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
-
Darby Bible Public Domain
and write them upon the posts of thy house, and upon thy gates;
-
World Messianic Bible Public Domain
You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates;
-
Webster's Bible Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house, and upon thy gates:
-
Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
Write them on the doorposts of your homes and on your gates,
-
Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Writing them on the pillars of your houses and over the doors of your towns:
-
JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates;
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
מְזוּז֥וֹת
mᵉzûwzâh
H4201
“doorposts of”
Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct
- Appears 19× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Exodus 12:7
- Part of Speech
- Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Feminine
- Number
- Plural
- State
- Construct
Full BDB Definition
doorpost, gatepost
- וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם kâthab H3789 “and · to write · them” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- עַל ʻal H5921 “upon” Preposition
- מְזוּז֥וֹת mᵉzûwzâh H4201 “doorposts of” Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct
- בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ bayith H1004 “house · your” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular
- וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ shaʻar H8179 “and · in/at · gates · your” Conjunction + Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 5
- words
- 5
- distinct lemmas
- Pentateuch
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is מְזוּז֥וֹת doorpost H4201 — appearing just 19 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מְזוּז֥וֹת doorpost H4201 occurs in 17 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 1 verb
- 3 nouns
- 1 preposition
Verb forms
- וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם Qal · Sequential Perfect
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 14 words from the Hebrew and 15 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
Cross-references
1Topical passages linked to Deuteronomy 11:20 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 6:9 You shall write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
καί γράφω αὐτός ἐπί ὁ φλιά ὁ οἰκία σύ καί ὁ πύλη σύ
And you⌃ shall write them on the lintels of your houses, and on your gates;
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
-
Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
וְתִכְתְּבִנוּן עַל מְזוּזְיָן וְתִקְבְּעִנוּן בְּסִפֵּי בֵיתָךְ וּבְתַרְעָיךְ
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
-
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
וְתִכְתְּבִינוּן בִּמְגִילְתָּא עַל מְזוּזְיַין וְתִקְבְּעִינוּן בְּתוֹלְתָּא קֳבֵל תִּקֵי בְּסִיפֵי בָתֵּיכוֹן וּבְתַרְעֵיכוֹן
And you shall write them upon parchment, upon the posts, and affix them to three (things), against thy chest, against the pillars of thy house, and against thy gates:
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Deuteronomy, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 5 words (5 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mᵉzûwzâh (“doorpost”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- The word mᵉzûwzâh carries the sense “doorpost.” How does it shape the verse?
- How does Exodus 12:7, which shares the word «doorpost», read alongside this verse?
- The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
- «וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם» is a Qal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
- Compare how Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary and unfoldingWord translationNotes read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- These translations choose different wording for 7 words in this verse.
- 5 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 5 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Deuteronomy 11:20 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
unfoldingWord translationNotes
Door43 World Missions Community
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.