1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 18 of 32.
Rabbi Yoshiyah pushed the question of women in injury law even further. If men and women are truly equated, he argued, why does the Torah mention either gender at all? Let neither ...
The debate over where the Israelites placed the Passover blood continues in the Mekhilta, and Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Yitzchak stake out dramatically different positions, each revea...
R. Yehudah perceives it thus: "And the children of Israel came in the midst of the sea": When the tribes were standing at the sea, each of them said: I will not go down first into ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves a precise legal discussion about the boundaries of Shabbat (the Sabbath) observance, rooted in the verse "Let each man sit in his place" (Ex...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai reads the second commandment, "There shall not be unto you any other gods before My presence," as the conclusion of a divine dialogue that began long before...
Rabbi Yonathan argued that the explicit mention of "a man or a woman" in (Exodus 21:29) was not even necessary to include women in injury law. Two other verses already accomplished...
The passage of the Mekhilta examines the command of the first Passover in Egypt, when Israel was told to take the blood of the lamb and "place it on the two side posts and on the l...
R. Tarfon and the elders were once sitting in the shade of the grove of Yavneh when this question was once asked before them: Why need it be written (Genesis 37:25) "and their came...
All who help Israel, help, as it were, the Holy One Blessed be He, viz. (Judges 5:23) "Curse Meroz, said the angel of the L–rd. Curse bitterly its dwellers. For they came not to th...
This midrash from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael gathers three rabbinic teachings on the reward for guarding the Sabbath, set in the wilderness when the manna first fell and Israel ...
The Mekhilta unpacks a subtle but powerful argument that God makes to Israel. The verse reads: "As the deeds of the land of Egypt in which you dwelt you shall not do" (Leviticus 18...
The Mekhilta notices a detail in the Passover laws that most readers skip right past. The Torah says the blood should go on the doorframes "of the houses in which they eat it" (Exo...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael draws a line from the Red Sea to another famous battlefield to demonstrate that God fights Israel's wars from heaven. The case in point: Sisera, the f...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael identifies a crucial legal distinction hidden in the commandment "There shall not be unto you other gods." The question is deceptively simple: what ex...
The Mekhilta preserves a rapid-fire debate about what exactly earned the tribe of Judah the right to kingship over Israel. The exchange is compressed and dramatic, as rabbinic dial...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael continues its catalog of enemies who rose against Israel and were struck down by heaven, turning now to one of the most dramatic military disasters in...
The Israelites called it manna. It fell from heaven every morning, and the Torah describes it with a comparison that immediately puzzles the Mekhilta's rabbis: "And it was like cor...
The Torah says that if men quarrel and one strikes the other "with stone or fist" (Exodus 21:18), the striker is liable. Does this mean liability exists only for these two specific...
"on this night": I might think, the entire night; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 10) "You shall not leave over anything of it until morning, and what is left over of it until mor...
The students asked their teacher: "Master, you tell us, in what merit did the tribe of Judah attain kingship over Israel?" Rabbi Tarfon gave an answer that has echoed through Jewis...
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, stood as the supreme example of human arrogance brought low. The Mekhilta recounts how this mighty ruler dared to place himself above all creation....
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves two interpretations of the manna's name, both attributed to tannaitic authorities, and both reveal how the rabbis found layers of meaning in...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael offers multiple interpretations of the Hebrew phrase "elohim acherim," commonly translated as "other gods." The rabbis noticed that the word "acherim"...
The Mekhilta reinforces Rabbi Tarfon's teaching about the tribe of Judah with a verse from Psalms. "When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from the people of a foreign t...
Belshazzar, king of Babylon, threw the banquet that ended his dynasty. The Mekhilta cites (Daniel 5:1), "King Belshazzar made a great banquet". And reads it as the culmination of B...
Rabbi Yossi offered a provocative comparison: just as a prophet reveals what is hidden, the manna did the same. The wordplay is built into the Hebrew, the word maggid (one who tell...
The Mekhilta asks why the Torah, in forbidding idolatry, calls the idols "other gods" (Exodus 20:3) rather than simply false or worthless things. Rabbi Yossi explains that the phra...
Rabbi Nathan analyzed the Torah's laws about lethal weapons with a precise analogy: stone is compared to fist, and fist is compared to stone. This mutual comparison, drawn from the...
The Mekhilta catches a subtle but crucial grammatical detail in (Exodus 15:7). The Song at the Sea does not say "You have destroyed those who rose up against You", past tense, as t...
Rabbi Eliezer offered a mordantly funny interpretation of the phrase "elohim acherim" (other gods) in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael. He connected "acherim" not to "otherness" but t...
The Mekhilta draws attention to a pattern hidden in the Torah's language. The verse states, "And it was in the morning watch" (Exodus 14:24), God looked down upon the Egyptian camp...
The Mekhilta identifies another future-tense verb in the Song at the Sea. It is not written "You have sent forth Your wrath", as if God's anger were already spent. But "You will se...
When God commanded that a jar of manna be preserved for future generations (Exodus 16:32), Moses relayed the instruction to his brother Aaron. But when exactly did Aaron carry it o...
The Mekhilta examines how the various foods of the Passover night relate to one another, asking which obligation can stand in for which. The first question is whether a person who ...
The "morning" of Jacob, (Ibid. 28:18) "and Jacob rose early in the morning, etc." The "morning" of Moses. Exodus 34:4) "and Moses rose early in the morning, etc." The "morning" of ...
The Mekhilta continues its grammatical investigation of the Song at the Sea and finds yet another future-tense verb. (Exodus 15:7) does not say "He has consumed them as stubble", p...
Ten miraculous objects were created in the final moments before the first Shabbat (the Sabbath), squeezed into existence during the twilight of the sixth day of Creation. The Mekhi...
Rabbi Chanina ben Antignos offered one of the sharpest anti-idolatry arguments in the entire Mekhilta, and he did it with a single devastating observation about language. The Torah...
The Torah's instructions for eating the Passover lamb include a phrase that seems straightforward but contains a legal depth charge: "with matzoth and maror shall they eat it" (Exo...
The Holy One Blessed be He heals all who enter the world, viz. (Exodus 15:26) "for I am the L–rd who heals you", (Jeremiah 17:14) "Heal me, O L–rd, and I will be healed. Save me, a...
The Mekhilta turns to an image drawn from the burning of fields to explain the manner of Egypt's downfall at the sea. All woods, when they burn, their sound is not heard, for solid...
The Mekhilta preserves a striking teaching about the limits of human knowledge: seven things are permanently hidden from the eyes of every person. No amount of wisdom, prophecy, or...
The Mekhilta here records a striking admission of method. R. Yishmael teaches that there are three places in the Torah where the plain words cannot be read literally and must be un...
Rabbi Yehudah interprets the verse "And He removed their chariot wheels" (Exodus 14:25) as describing a scene far more spectacular than a simple mechanical failure. According to hi...
When the (other) kingdoms are symbolized, they are symbolized as cedars, viz. (Ezekiel 31:3) "Behold, Ashur, a cedar in the Levanon," and (Amos 2:9) "And I destroyed the Emori from...
Moses told Aaron to take a "tzintzeneth" and fill it with manna to preserve for future generations (Exodus 16:33). But what exactly was a tzintzeneth? The word appears nowhere else...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael examines the phrase "before My presence" in the prohibition against idolatry, asking what this seemingly redundant qualifier adds. The answer reveals ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a connection between two seemingly unrelated legal passages in the Torah, both involving the concept of metaphorical language in legal contexts....
