1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 24 of 32.
The Mekhilta interprets the phrase "to the habitation of Your holiness" as a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem. God guided Israel through the wilderness in the merit of the holy...
(Exodus, Ibid. 16) "And they said to Moses: Speak, you, with us, and we will hear, (and let G–d not speak with us, lest we die.") We are hereby apprised that they lacked the streng...
The Torah grants freedom to a bondservant whose master knocks out a tooth or blinds an eye. But does this apply only to adult bondservants? What about a minor, a child bondservant ...
(Exodus 15:14) "Peoples heard, they quaked": When the peoples heard that Pharaoh and his hosts were lost in the sea, that the rule of Egypt had ended, and that their idolatry had b...
After the revelation at Sinai, God speaks with a kind of longing (Devarim 5:26): "Would that this heart of theirs were in them to fear Me and to keep all of My mitzvot all the days...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael examines the law that a master who maims his servant must set the servant free. The Torah names two specific injuries, the eye and the tooth, and the...
Rabbi Yoshiyah takes the verse "And you shall watch over the matzot" and performs one of the most beloved wordplays in all of rabbinic literature, a reading that transforms a law a...
This teaching from the Mekhilta interprets the Song at the Sea, where Moses and Israel sing of the terror that fell upon the surrounding nations after the splitting of the Red Sea....
The Israelites stood at the edge of the sea, the Egyptian army bearing down behind them, and terror gripped the camp. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, freshly lib...
(Exodus 20:17) says that God came to Sinai "in order to exert you." The Mekhilta reinterprets this: "exert" actually means "to make you great." God's arrival at Sinai was not meant...
Rabbi Yishmael taught a sobering principle about Canaanite bondservants: a Canaanite bondservant can never be redeemed by an outside party. The only path to freedom is the master's...
The Torah describes the Exodus with the phrase "I took out your hosts." The Mekhilta asks a question that might seem obvious but carries deep theological weight: whose hosts are be...
When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, the news sent shockwaves through the ancient world. The Mekhilta examines the verse "Then the chiefs of Edom were confounded" (Exodus 15:15...
After the overwhelming experience of hearing God's voice at Sinai, the Israelites retreated. (Exodus 20:18) records: "And the people stood from afar." The Mekhilta specifies the di...
Despite the permanence of Canaanite servitude, there was one path to freedom that did not require the master's consent: suffering. If a master persecuted his Canaanite bondservant ...
"And you shall guard this day": What is the intent of this? Is it not already written (16) "all labor shall not be done in them"? This tells me only of labor per se. Whence do I de...
(Ibid.) "And Moses entered into the mist": This (his closeness to the L–rd) was a function of his humility, viz. (Numbers 12:3) "And the man Moses was extremely humble, etc." Scrip...
The Mekhilta applies the same logic to Moab that it applied to Edom. The verse says "the mighty ones of Moab were seized with trembling," and the rabbis ask the same question: why?...
This Mekhilta teaching weighs the spiritual cost of arrogance, equating the proud person with an idolater through a chain of shared scriptural language. It begins with the claim th...
When Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the Torah records that "Moses entered into the mist, where God was" (Exodus 20:21). The Mekhilta reveals that this approach to...
The Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael, commenting on the Song at the Sea, examines the line in the Song (Exodus 15:15) that "all the inhabitants of Canaan melted." It asks what these dist...
(Exodus 20:19) records God telling Moses: "Thus shall you say to the children of Israel." The Mekhilta seizes on the word "thus", in Hebrew, "koh". And derives a surprising rule: M...
The Mekhilta makes a careful distinction in the verse "There fell upon them dread and terror" (Exodus 15:16). "Dread" fell upon the distant nations. "Terror" fell upon the near one...
At Sinai, God made a statement to Israel that no other nation in history could claim: "You saw that from the heavens I spoke to you." The Mekhilta pauses on this verse to draw out ...
The Mekhilta reads the phrase "By the greatness of Your arm they were struck still as stone" as describing a specific historical moment. When the Israelites emerged from the Red Se...
Rabbi Nathan drew a sharp line between what Israel experienced at Sinai and what the rest of the world perceived. The nations heard about the revelation. Israel saw it. That differ...
Two biblical verses about Sinai appear to contradict each other directly. (Exodus 20:19) says God spoke "from the heavens." But (Exodus 19:20) says "the Lord went down upon Mount S...
The Mekhilta offers a variant tradition that shifts the scene from the Red Sea to the Jordan River. When Israel crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, all the kings of Canaan b...
When God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Torah says He "descended" upon the mountain (Exodus 19:20). But it also says He spoke "from the heavens" (Exodus 20:22). These two state...
Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, grappled with a verse that seems to describe God physically descending to Mount Sinai. (Exodus 19:20): "And the Lord went down upon Mount Sinai upon th...
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws together four things that Scripture describes with the language of "acquisition" or "purchase," the Hebrew root kanah, and sh...
The passage from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a careful lesson from a single grammatical detail in the Song of the Sea. Commenting on (Exodus 15:18) "You will bring them and...
Rabbi Yishmael read the commandment against idolatry with a scope that went far beyond golden calves and carved statues. When the Torah says "You shall not make unto Me gods of sil...
The Torah states: "And if an ox gore a man or a woman and they die, the ox shall surely be stoned" (Exodus 21:28). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael asks: why does the Torah need this ...
The Mekhilta addresses a gap in the Torah's instructions about eating matzah during Passover. The verse states, "Seven days shall you eat matzot" (Exodus 12:18). This clearly estab...
Rabbi Nathan interpreted the prohibition against idolatry in (Exodus 20:20), "You shall not make alongside Me", with striking directness. God is saying: do not think you can make a...
"And if an ox gore", the Torah mentions only an ox. But what about other animals? If a donkey kicks someone, or a camel bites, do the same laws apply? The Mekhilta says yes, and de...
The verse (Exodus 12:19) declares, "Seven days se'or (leaven, the sourdough starter) shall not be found in your houses." The Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael, the early halakhic midrash ...
The Mekhilta offers an alternate reading of the verse "You will bring them and You will plant them." The key word is "plant." God does not merely promise to place Israel in the lan...
R. Akiva says: "You shall not do (i.e. deport yourselves) with Me" as others do with their gods. When good befalls them, they honor their gods, viz. (Habakkuk 1:16) "Therefore, he ...
The Torah specifies that a goring ox is put to death by stoning. But what about an ox that kills by biting, kicking, or trampling rather than goring? Are all forms of animal-inflic...
(Ibid. 19) "In your houses": What is the intent of this? I might take (13:7) "in all of your boundaries," literally (i.e., even if the chametz is not yours); it is, therefore, writ...
The book of Job presents one of the most profound tests of faith in all of Scripture. Job loses everything, his wealth, his children, his health. And his wife urges him to curse Go...
The Mekhilta raises an objection to equating the tam (first-time gorer) with the mued (habitual gorer). The two categories are not truly parallel. A mued's owner pays kofer, a rans...
(Ibid. 19) "For whoever eats leavening, that soul shall be cut off": What is the intent of this? From (Ibid. 15) "Whoever eats chametz shall be cut off," I would know only of chame...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael gathers four sacred things that Scripture each describes with the same word, inheritance (nachalah), and weaves them into a single argument about Isra...
The Mekhilta makes a claim that strikes against every human instinct: a person should rejoice in suffering more than in prosperity. The reasoning is startling in its logic. Even if...
Another question about the tam, the first-time goring ox. We have established that all forms of killing are equated with goring. But are minors, children killed by a tam, treated t...
