1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 16 of 32.
Variantly: "I am the L–rd your G–d": When the Holy One Blessed be He stood and said "I am the L–rd your G–d," the mountains shook and the hills quivered, and Tavor came from Be'er ...
The Torah says a person who strikes his father or mother "shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:15), but it does not specify the method of execution. The Mekhilta identifies this silen...
(Exodus 23:19) prohibits: "You shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk." Rabbi Shimon asked why this prohibition is stated three times in the Torah, here, in (Exodus 34:26), and ...
The Mekhilta identifies one of the hidden miracles of the Egyptian exile: the Israelites never abandoned the Hebrew language. Despite living for centuries among Egyptian speakers, ...
(Exodus 14:21) "And Moses stretched his hand over the sea": and the sea resisted, whereupon Moses commanded it to split in the name of the Holy One Blessed be He; but it continued ...
The Mekhilta offers a second reading of the phrase "as a stone" from the Song at the Sea. The Egyptians sank like stone because their hearts were hard as stone, unyielding, unmovab...
On the sixth day of the week, something unprecedented happened with the manna. (Exodus 16:22) records that the Israelites gathered a double portion, two omers instead of the usual ...
Before offering the Torah to Israel, God first approached every other nation on earth. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael explains that this was not because God expected them to accept....
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) drew a profound parallel between divine punishment and human punishment. "There is 'death' at the hands of Heaven and 'death' at the hands of man," he ...
The prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother's milk appears three separate times in the Torah (Exodus 23:19, (Exodus 34:26), and Deuteronomy 14:21). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yis...
The Mekhilta raises a question that cuts to the heart of the Passover story: why did God command the Israelites to select the Passover lamb four full days before slaughtering it? W...
The Mekhilta unpacks the declaration from (Exodus 15:6): "Your right hand, O Lord, is grand in power." The Hebrew phrase "nedari bakeach" is read as a compound, "na'eh" (comely) an...
Before giving the Torah to Israel, God first offered it to every other nation on earth. The Mekhilta records one of the most dramatic of these encounters, the moment God approached...
The Mekhilta records the precise procedure for carrying out the judicial penalty of strangulation, one of the four methods of capital punishment prescribed by Torah law. Far from b...
The Mekhilta reveals a pattern in God's use of wind as an instrument of judgment, a pattern that connects the destruction of Egypt at the Red Sea to two earlier catastrophes in hum...
This midrash of the Mekhilta uses the generation of the Tower of Bavel as an example of divine patience. The point being made is that the L-rd does not strike at once but grants th...
"What you would bake, bake": R. Yehoshua says: One who wanted "baked," would have it baked for him (of itself), and one who wanted "cooked" would have it cooked for him. R. Elazar ...
After being rejected by the sons of Esau, God turned to the sons of Ammon and Moab and made the same offer: "Will you accept the Torah?" The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael records their...
R. Yehudah b. Betheira says: It is written (Exodus 6:9) "And they would not hearken to Moses (as to G–d's delivering them), for shortness of spirit, etc." Now is there anyone who i...
The Mekhilta extends its catalogue of divine judgment by east wind to yet another generation: the builders of the Tower of Babel. The pattern grows stronger with each example, God ...
Thus do you find with the men of Sodom, that You gave them a grace period for repentance and they did not repent. As it is written (Genesis 18:20-21) "And the L–rd said: The outcry...
The Mekhilta tells of God offering the Torah to the nations before giving it to Israel, so that no nation could later complain it had been passed over. He came and revealed Himself...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael presents a classic a fortiori argument, known in rabbinic logic as kal va-chomer, "from the light to the heavy." This particular kal va-chomer address...
Moses told the Israelites to take a lamb for the Passover offering, and they were terrified. The Mekhilta preserves their fearful protest: "Will we slaughter the abomination of Egy...
God uses the east wind as an instrument of judgment, and the pattern repeats across the Hebrew Bible with striking consistency. In Egypt, it was the east wind that brought the plag...
The Song at the Sea praises God not only for His power but for His patience. The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael highlights a detail that the Israelites themselves recognized as they san...
R. Shimon b. Elazar said: If the sons of Noach could not abide by the seven mitzvoth (commandments) commanded them, how much more so (could they not abide) by all the mitzvoth of t...
The Torah states: "And one who steals a man and sells him, and he is found in his hand, he shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:16). The Mekhilta asks what this verse adds, since kidn...
The Mekhilta takes a phrase from the Passover laws, "it shall be to you for a keeping" (Exodus 12:6). And asks what seems like a technical question with surprising depth. Does "kee...
The Mekhilta notices something extraordinary in the Song at the Sea: the phrase "Your right hand, O Lord" appears twice in (Exodus 15:6). Why the repetition? Because the right hand...
This teaching of the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael describes the people's confusion on the first Sabbath of the manna, before they had learned its weekly rhythm. Every other day they w...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael pauses on a single phrase from the Ten Commandments to ask a question about dignity. When God declared "who took you out from the land of Egypt," what...
The Torah states: "And one who steals a man.. shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:16). The crime of kidnapping carries the death penalty. But the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael imm...
Scripture specified it (the fourteenth day) as mandatory. It is not the second assumption, then, that is to be accepted, but the first. "And it shall be to you for a keeping": Scri...
Does God sleep? The Mekhilta wrestles with this question through a startling paradox. When Israel does God's will, there is no sleep before Him. (Psalms 121:4) declares it plainly:...
The Torah uses masculine language when describing the crime of kidnapping. (Deuteronomy 24:7) says "if a man be found to have stolen," and (Exodus 21:16) says "one who steals a man...
The passage from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, wrestles with the boundaries of the prohibition against cooking meat and milk together. The Torah s...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael presents a teaching about the direct connection between Israel's obedience and God's wrath, expressed through two contrasting verses that form a perfe...
Moses spoke three words that carried immense weight: "Eat it today" (Exodus 16:25). He said it not once but three times in the same verse. "Eat it today, for it is Sabbath today. T...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael works through the law of kidnapping, which the Torah punishes with death. The phrase "And one who steals a man" seems, on its face, to exclude liabil...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael presents a teaching that parallels and extends the previous one about divine wrath, now turning to the subject of divine warfare. The principle is the...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai expanded the promise of Sabbath observance far beyond three festivals. Where Rabbi Yehoshua linked Shabbat (the Sabbath) to Pesach (Passover), Shavuot, and Suc...
The Torah states plainly: "If a man be found to have stolen a soul" (Deuteronomy 24:7). This is the law against kidnapping, one of the gravest crimes in Jewish jurisprudence, punis...
Rabbi Yossi Haglili derived an important rule about the meat-and-milk prohibition from the juxtaposition of two verses. The Torah places "You shall not eat all carrion" next to "Yo...
The verse "and they shall slaughter it" governs the Pesach (Passover) offering, and the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the early halakhic midrash on Exodus, presses on a hard collision...
The Mekhilta is expounding the splitting of the Sea, where Scripture says that the L-rd drove back the sea "with a strong east wind." The east wind is singled out, and the sages do...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws attention to a single word in the Song at the Sea that transforms the entire verse from a description of the past into a prophecy of the future....
The Torah says about a kidnapper: "and sells him" (Exodus 21:16). The Mekhilta derives from this phrasing that the kidnapper is liable only if he sells the entire person, not half....
