360 passagesc. 3rd-4th century CEHebrew / AramaicPublic Domain
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai, shown in source order. Page 1 of 8.
Moses tended his flock at the edge of the desert when a thornbush burned without burning away. Why a thornbush, the sages asked, of all the trees God could have chosen for His firs...
The conversation at the burning bush was not a single exchange. Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh counted the days hidden inside Moses' own words of refusal. When Moses finally protested, "I ...
The Torah says God's anger flared against Moses (Exodus 4:14), and the sages bent close to understand why. Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh insisted that God dealt with Moses only by fair an...
When God answered Moses with the words "I am the LORD" (Exodus 6:2), the sages heard not a name but a stack of unpaid promises. Each rabbi placed a different oath on the table. Rab...
The Torah notes that the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron "in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:1), and the sages found a quiet law of geography in those words. Before the Land of Israel ...
At the threshold of redemption, before a single plague had run its course, God handed Israel its first national commandment: "This month shall be for you the head of months, the fi...
The instruction to take the Passover lamb was not whispered to a few leaders. "Speak to all the congregation of Israel" (Exodus 12:3), the sages noted, teaches that this command wa...
What happens when a single household is too few to finish a whole Passover lamb? The Torah's answer, "if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor shall take"...
Scripture does not waste a word, and here it piles up qualifications for the Passover offering: it must be a lamb, without blemish, a year old, drawn from the sheep or the goats. R...
The command to hold the lamb in safekeeping for four days reads like a small instruction, but the sages saw a confrontation hidden inside it. Ben Azzai keeps it plain: the animal m...
Every detail of the blood rite is weighed. First the blood itself: there must be enough to constitute a real "taking," and it must be the lifeblood that flows at slaughter, not the...
How the lamb is eaten matters as much as that it is eaten. The rabbis fix a minimum: no "eating" is less than an olive's bulk, and it must be flesh, not bone, sinew, horn, or hoof....
The Torah does not merely command roasting; it forbids the alternatives, and the sages parse exactly where the lines fall. "Raw" here means undercooked, and one might have guessed ...
Nothing of the Passover may be carried into the next day. "Leave none of it until morning," the Torah commands, and then adds that whatever does remain must be burned with fire. Th...
The Torah does not only tell Israel what to eat but how to stand while eating it. "Eat it in haste," it says, and the sages catch the mood exactly: the alarm of travelers about to ...
On the night of the tenth plague, the Torah has God say, "I will pass through the land of Egypt." The sages picture a king moving in person from place to place, surveying his realm...
It was the night before the going-out from Egypt. The instruction came: smear the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. But on which part of the house? The sages press the words like...
When the Torah calls Passover "a day of remembrance," it raises a small but real puzzle. Which day, exactly? The sages tie it down by cross-checking the verses: Israel ate the lamb...
Seven days of matzah, says the Torah, and the rabbis immediately ask what counts. Bread that can be eaten across all seven days qualifies; the thanksgiving loaves and the Nazirite'...
The festival day must be made holy, and the rabbis ask the plain question: holy by what means? Their answer is concrete and joyful. You sanctify the day with food, with drink, and ...
"You shall guard the matzot," says the Torah, and the rabbis read that word "guard" in two directions at once. First, guard the dough itself so it does not rise. Rabbi Yehudah hear...
How precisely does the Torah want its timing kept? The rabbis read the verse word by word like a clockmaker setting gears. "In the first month" might mean the whole month, so the t...
The Torah forbids leaven to be "found" in your houses, and the rabbis fasten on the word. It rules out the trick of hiding leaven away or declaring it ownerless in a distant city; ...
"You shall eat nothing leavened," and the rabbis spread the net wide. Into it fall the fermented stuff of many lands: Babylonian kutach, Median beer, Edomite vinegar, Egyptian zith...
Before the night of deliverance, Moses does not address the crowd at large. He calls for the elders, and the Sages read meaning into that choice. Moses honored the old men of his g...
The instrument of the blood-rite is humble: a bunch of hyssop, the lowly plant that grows in cracks of walls. Rabbi Yehudah binds this hyssop to other moments in the Torah where th...
The verse describes the LORD passing through Egypt to strike, and the Sages link this word for passing through to a verse in Amos where the same term carries the weight of a plague...
"You shall keep this matter as a statute for you and for your children forever." The Sages press on the small word "this," asking what exactly is meant to endure. The hyssop bunch,...
The promise looks past the wilderness to the land that lies ahead. "When you come to the land," the verse says, and the Sages hear in its phrasing the full territory of the seven n...
The Torah anticipates a child who will one day stand at the table and ask, not in wonder but in distance, "What is this service to you?" The Sages catch the sting in that small wor...
The Sages first guard the offering's intent. Every act of the Passover sacrifice must be done for its own sake, dedicated to the Passover and to the unique Name alone, or it is dis...
The verse seems simple: "the children of Israel went and did as the LORD commanded." But the Sages weigh each word. "Went and did," they note, names two acts, the going and the doi...
Notice the gap between how Moses spoke and how the Torah records the moment. Moses told Pharaoh the blow would fall "about midnight," leaving the edges blurry, because a mortal can...
Kings sleep late and are woken by servants. Not this night. Pharaoh sprang up in the dark with no one to rouse him, and so did every servant, and so did every Egyptian, each jolted...
Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron in the dead of night, but the Torah has already commanded Israel not to step outside their doors before morning. So how did the meeting happen? The ...
Pharaoh's surrender comes in pieces. He releases the flocks Israel already owns, then the herds belonging to his own officials, then says, "Take them, as you have spoken, and go." ...
The Egyptians stop dragging their feet and start shoving Israel toward the door. The rabbis say their old dominance had collapsed, the strength that once held slaves now drained aw...
The exit was so sudden that Israel scooped up dough that had not yet had time to rise. The rabbis catch the precise tension in the verse: the dough was right on the verge of leaven...
Moses gave Israel a quiet instruction about how to ask, and the people obeyed it to the letter. Do not go drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood collecting goods, he warned, so...
What exactly was the "favor" Israel found in Egyptian eyes? The rabbis tell a startling story. During the three days of darkness, Israel could walk freely through Egyptian houses, ...
The numbers in the Exodus account are not careless. The sages of the Mekhilta read them as precise sums charged with meaning. The road from Rameses to Succoth ran one hundred and s...
Israel did not leave Egypt alone. The Mekhilta says a great mixed multitude went up with them, converts and freed slaves who threw in their lot with the redeemed people. They were ...
The matzah of the Exodus was born of urgency. The Torah says Israel baked unleavened cakes from the dough they carried out of Egypt, because they were thrust out and could not wait...
The arithmetic of the Exodus seems impossible at first glance. The Torah says the sojourning of Israel was four hundred and thirty years, yet the rabbis insist the people were in E...
Midnight is the Torah's hinge. The Mekhilta gathers three turning points of Israel's story and binds them to that single hour. At midnight God cut the covenant between the pieces w...
The Passover night, the Torah says, is a night of watching unto the LORD, and the rabbis hear in that word a promise that runs the length of history. The first redemption from Egyp...
The Torah opens the Passover laws with a sweeping word: "This is the ordinance of the Passover." The Mekhilta seizes on "ordinance" to bridge two Passovers, the one Israel kept on ...
The Passover lamb cannot be eaten by anyone uncircumcised, and the Torah extends that demand to a master's household. "Every man's slave you shall circumcise," and only then may he...
