1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 23 of 32.
Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, taught that "nefesh (the vital soul) for nefesh", "a life for a life", means monetary compensation, not literal execution. The Torah is requiring the p...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a careful distinction between how long a punishment lasts and how long a prohibition stands. Of leaven during Passover the Torah says "from the ...
The Mekhilta once again turns to verb tense to extract prophecy from the Song at the Sea. The verse does not say "worked wonders", past tense, as though God's miracles were finishe...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the early halakhic midrash on Exodus from the school of Rabbi Yishmael, reads the Ten Commandments as two facing tablets whose lines correspond to on...
"An eye for an eye", the Mekhilta states flatly that this means money. Monetary compensation, not literal blinding. But the text anticipates resistance to this reading: perhaps an ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael takes the phrase "working wonders" from the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:11) and expands it far beyond the events at the Red Sea. The Torah describes Go...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael identifies another pairing across the two tablets of the Ten Commandments. "Honor your father and your mother" stood directly opposite "You shall not ...
Rabbi Eliezer offered an additional proof that "eye for an eye" means monetary compensation. His argument is an a fortiori, a kal va-chomer, that he considered logically airtight. ...
The Song at the Sea praises God as one "working wonders" (Exodus 15:11). The Mekhilta reads this not only as a memory of what God did for the patriarchs and the generation of the E...
The sages offered an alternative view of how the Ten Commandments were arranged on the two tablets. While Rabbi Chanina ben Gamliel taught that five commandments appeared on each t...
R. Yitzchak says: "an eye for an eye": I understand this to mean that whether or not he intends (to blind him), he pays only money. And, indeed, Scripture limits one who intends to...
Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, noticed that the Torah prohibits coveting in two separate places using two different Hebrew words. (Exodus 20:14) says "You shall not covet," while (De...
The verse lists "A burn for a burn" (Exodus 21:25) among the injuries for which a person must pay. The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael asks what this clause can possibly add, since the ...
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house", general. "and his man-servant, and his maid-servant, and his ox, and his ass, particular. general-particular (The rule is:) There exist...
The Torah declares in (Exodus 12:16), "On the first day, a calling of holiness." The Mekhilta asks what it actually means to "call" a day holy. And the answer is surprisingly concr...
(Exodus 15:12) declares: "You inclined Your right hand, the earth swallowed them up." The Mekhilta reads this verse not primarily as a description of the Egyptians' death, but as a...
(Exodus 20:15) describes an extraordinary moment at Sinai: "And all the people saw the sounds and the lightnings." The people did not merely hear the divine voice, they saw it. Rab...
The Mekhilta on the laws of damages examines a verse that protects a non-Israelite bondsman from his master's violence. "And if a man strike the eye of his man-servant" (Exodus 21:...
The Torah states that "all labor shall not be done" on the festival days of Passover. The Mekhilta reads this straightforwardly, it tells us that labor is forbidden on the first an...
The Egyptians drowned at the Red Sea. But they also received burial. The Mekhilta asks the obvious question: in what merit were the Egyptians granted burial? They had enslaved Isra...
"And all the people saw", the sounds of sounds and the flames of flames. The Mekhilta asks: how many sounds were there at Sinai, and how many flames? The answer is not a specific n...
R. Yonathan says: This (derivation) is not necessary. If labor is forbidden on the first and last days, which are neither preceded nor followed by holiness, then how much more so c...
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael comments on a line in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:12) "You inclined Your right hand, the earth swallowed them up." The rabbis as...
The Mekhilta offers yet another interpretation of "And all the people saw", this one focused not on the nature of the experience but on the spiritual state of the Israelites who re...
The Torah states in (Exodus 12:16) that "all labor shall not be done" on the festival days. The Mekhilta asks a pointed question: who exactly is covered by this prohibition? The an...
The Mekhilta offers an alternate reading of the Song at the Sea's phrase "You have inclined Your right hand." When God stretches out His hand, the wicked vanish from the world enti...
Rabbi Eliezer teaches that the wording of the Torah at Sinai comes to apprise us of the exalted, healed state of Israel at the moment they received the Torah. According to this rea...
Rabbi Yonathan arrives at the same conclusion as Rabbi Yoshiyah, that a non-Jew may perform labor for a Jew on the festival. But takes a completely different route to get there. Hi...
The Mekhilta offers a vivid and unsettling analogy for divine power over the nations. Picture a man holding eggs in his hand. He tilts his hand just slightly, barely a movement, an...
In this teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, R. Nathan reads the strange nighttime vision granted to Abraham at the Covenant Between the Pieces as a prophetic preview of hi...
The Mekhilta extends the previous argument about festival labor restrictions to Shabbat (the Sabbath) itself, using an elegant reversal of the kal va-chomer, the argument from less...
The Mekhilta interprets the verse "You have led forth in lovingkindness" (Exodus 15:13) as a startling admission: Israel had no merit of their own when they were redeemed from Egyp...
Rabbi Eliezer tackles a textual ambiguity in the Torah's laws of servitude that has real legal consequences. The verse under discussion deals with the acquisition of servants, and ...
"only what is to be eaten by all souls": All (labors) of ochel nefesh (food processing) override the festival, but not all offerings (aside from those which are festival-linked) ov...
The passage from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael expounds a phrase from the Song at the Sea, "this people whom You have redeemed." The midrash hears in it a declaration of intimacy: ...
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael reads the Covenant Between the Pieces as a hidden vision of Israel's long history under foreign empires. At that covenant, "when th...
"the eye of his man-servant": The verse in question (Exodus 21:26) rules that if a master strikes the eye of his Canaanite bondsman and destroys it, the slave goes free in compensa...
The Torah permits certain food preparation on festival days with the phrase "only what is to be eaten by all souls." The Mekhilta records a debate about exactly how far this permis...
This midrash from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael records a scene in the study hall of Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. He was sitting and expounding the astonishing teaching that one wo...
The Mekhilta addresses a precise scenario: what happens when a master knocks out two of his bondservant's teeth. Or blinds both eyes, simultaneously, in a single blow? The ruling i...
Rabbi Yossi HaGlili reads the same verse about "what is to be eaten by all souls" and arrives at a different conclusion than Rabbi Yishmael. Where Yishmael excludes both animals an...
The Mekhilta reads the phrase "You have guided them in Your strength" as a prophecy pointing forward in time. God guided Israel through the sea not because of anything they had alr...
At the giving of the Torah the people drew back in terror, and Scripture records, "And they stood from afar." The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael measures that distance precisely: they s...
Rabbi Akiva agrees with Rabbi Yossi HaGlili that animals are included in the festival food-preparation permission. But he reaches this conclusion through a different textual mechan...
The Mekhilta offers an alternate reading of "You have guided them in Your strength." Here, "strength" does not refer to the Torah. It refers to the kingdom of the house of David. G...
R. b. R. Ilai pictures Israel standing at the foot of Sinai, exposed beneath a burning sky. Because they were scorched by the sun above them, he teaches, the Holy One Blessed be He...
Rabbi Eliezer employs one of the most powerful tools in the rabbinic interpretive arsenal: the gezeirah shavah, a comparison of two passages that share a common word. The word in q...
The Torah commands in (Exodus 12:17), "And you shall watch over the matzot." The Mekhilta takes this verse as the foundation for one of the most detailed areas of Passover law: the...
