360 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai, shown in source order. Page 7 of 8.
A thief steals an ox or a sheep and then slaughters or sells it, putting the animal beyond recovery. The Torah answers with a steep penalty, five oxen for the stolen ox and four sh...
A thief breaks in at night. He pries open the wall, he tunnels under the threshold, he comes through the courtyard or the garden where the household sleeps. The Torah looks at this...
Sunrise is not really about the sun. The Torah says "if the sun has risen upon him," and the sages press the image. The sun does not rise on one man alone; it rises on the whole wo...
A thief is caught with a living animal. Before the law of double payment can fall on him, two things must be true together: witnesses must see him break in and find the stolen good...
Whose fault is it when an animal eats a neighbor's crop? The Torah answers by watching how the beast got loose. If thieves merely opened the pen and the animal wandered out on its ...
A man kindles a fire on his own land, and it leaps to his neighbor's. The Torah holds him responsible even though he never intended the spread. But the liability has a boundary wri...
A man hands his neighbor money or goods to guard. The Torah builds a whole law of trust on that simple act. The sages first set the boundaries of who counts: a child's act of entru...
When the deposit is gone and no thief can be produced, the case does not simply collapse. The keeper who pleaded that a thief took the goods, with no witnesses to back him, must dr...
What does a man owe when he reaches for what is not his? The Houses of Shammai and Hillel split at the first step. Shammai reads "any matter of trespass" to mean that even the inte...
When a neighbor hands you something to safeguard, the Torah is not vague about what comes next. The Sages read the verses of Exodus 22 with surgical care, separating one law from t...
An oath sworn in the name of Heaven is not a piece of courtroom theater that ends when the words stop. The Sages saw it as a living thing that lingers. The oath of the LORD never l...
The paid bailee is not the unpaid guardian. Because he draws wages for watching the property, the Torah holds him to a higher standard. Scripture names theft directly, but the Sage...
A shepherd comes back with a torn carcass and a story. The Torah will not simply take his word, nor will it simply condemn him. It demands evidence and then draws a careful line. R...
The borrower stands apart. The Torah pulls him out of the paid bailee's category and treats him as his own case, because he alone enjoys the object completely without paying for it...
One small phrase guards against an obvious dodge. Could a man send a stand-in, telling someone, "Go be borrowed alongside my cow," and thereby free the borrower from liability thro...
The law of the seducer opens with a hard observation about how desire moves in the world. Rabbi Eliezer would sigh when he reached this verse. It is the way of things, he said, tha...
After the seducer's obligation comes the family's power to say no. The verse "if her father utterly refuses" hands the father real authority over whether the marriage proceeds. But...
How should a court treat one who practices sorcery? Scripture commands, "You shall not let a sorcerer live" (Exodus 22:17), and the sages first noticed something in the wording its...
Scripture had already addressed a man who sins with an animal, and it had already addressed a woman who does so. Why, then, does the Torah add yet another verse, "Whoever lies with...
"One who sacrifices to other gods shall be utterly destroyed, except to the LORD alone" (Exodus 22:19). The sages first ruled out a tempting misreading. Perhaps the verse condemns ...
"You shall not wrong a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:20). The sages heard two distinct verbs and refused to flatten them into o...
"You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child" (Exodus 22:21). The sages first asked whether the prohibition stops at these two. Are only the widow and the orphan protected?...
"If you afflict, afflict them, and they cry out, cry out to Me, I will surely hear their cry" (Exodus 22:22). What counts as affliction? The sages drew the boundary carefully. Wear...
"My anger shall burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless" (Exodus 22:23). The sages mapped the threat by tracing its wo...
"If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not be to him as a creditor; you shall not lay upon him interest" (Exodus 22:24). The word "if" usually leaves a choice, ...
The verse seems to grant the creditor a free hand: take a pledge from the one who owes you. But the rabbis hear two voices in the Torah. One verse forbids barging into a debtor's h...
The Torah piles up words for a poor man's belongings, and the rabbis refuse to let any of them go to waste. His shirt, his cloak, his hide-covering, the very thing he sleeps in: ev...
The verse forbids cursing "God," which the rabbis read at two levels at once: the human judge who renders justice and the Divine Name itself. A casual insult does not cross the lin...
Two ordinary-sounding words, "your fullness and your tithe," open into the whole architecture of Israel's gifts to God. "Fullness" is the first fruits, lifted from the abundance of...
The firstborn animal stands beside the firstborn son, but the parallel is not exact. The human firstborn can be redeemed anywhere in the land; the firstborn beast, if blemished, is...
"You shall be holy people to Me." Issi ben Yehudah reads the verse as a quiet promise hidden inside a demand: every time God lays another commandment on Israel, He is not burdening...
A single verse, "You shall not carry a false report," becomes a whole code of honest courts and clean speech. The rabbis read it first as a rule for the courtroom. A judge must not...
"You shall not follow the majority to do evil." The rabbis mine this short clause for the entire structure of a capital court. From a verse in Numbers about a congregation that jud...
Compassion can wear the mask of justice. The Torah anticipates the judge who looks down from the bench at a ragged litigant and feels his heart move. The man is poor. He comes from...
The Torah could have framed the duty narrowly: help your brother, your friend, the man you like. Instead it chooses the hardest case. The animal wandering loose, dragging its load ...
The verse speaks of "one who hates you," and the sages are troubled. Israel is forbidden to hate a fellow Jew. So who is this hated man whose donkey has collapsed under its load? T...
A general law already forbids twisting judgment for rich or poor alike. So when the Torah adds a separate warning about "your needy one," the sages refuse to let the words be waste...
"Keep far from a false matter" reads like a vague moral slogan, but the sages mine it for the architecture of a fair trial. A judge may not listen to one side before the other arri...
The Torah does not say a bribe corrupts only the foolish or the weak. It says it blinds "the eyes of the wise." The sages press on that word. A bribe does not merely tempt a learne...
The Torah returns to the stranger again and again, by one count in thirty-six places. Rabbi Eliezer asks why the convert needs so many warnings, and his answer is unsentimental. Th...
The land of Israel keeps its own calendar of labor and rest. Six years the farmer sows and reaps; the seventh year the soil lies fallow. The sages wrestle with the seams between th...
Every seventh year the Torah unclenches the farmer's fist. "And in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow" (Exodus 23:11). The sages hear two distinct releases in th...
"Six days you shall do your work" (Exodus 23:12) sounds like a description, but the sages press it into a question. Does rest only count for someone who actually finished a full we...
"And in all that I have said to you, take heed" (Exodus 23:13) reads like a closing flourish, but the sages give it teeth. One application: do not rent your animal to someone who w...
"Three times in the year" the Torah calls Israel up to the place God chooses (Exodus 23:14). The Hebrew word for "times" is also the word for "feet," and the sages play on it. The ...
"You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread" (Exodus 23:15). A parallel verse ties the festival to the spring barley, "keep the month of the spring and offer the Passover" (Deute...
The Torah names two more festivals by their work in the soil: the feast of harvest, when the firstfruits come in, and the feast of ingathering, "at the going out of the year" (Exod...
"Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the LORD" (Exodus 23:17). The sages refuse to read "times" loosely. It does not mean any moment a person feels moved to ...
