1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 5 of 32.
During the battle against Amalek, Moses stood on a hilltop with his arms raised, channeling divine power to the Israelite warriors below. But holding your arms up for hours is grue...
The verse says Moses' hands were "steadfast" during the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17:12). The Mekhilta reads that single word as a double testimony, each of Moses' two hands te...
Rabbi Eliezer claimed that a single Hebrew word in the Torah contained an entire military history encoded as an acronym. The word is "vayachalosh," which appears in the account of ...
After Joshua's defeat of Amalek at Rephidim, the Mekhilta records an interpretation that turns the battle into a fulfillment of one of the most chilling prophecies in Scripture. Th...
(Exodus 12:2) records God's instruction to Moses: "This month shall be to you the beginning of months." It is the very first commandment given to Israel as a nation, even before th...
(Exodus 14:1-2) "And the L–rd said to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel that they return and encamp": R. Shimon b. Yochai says: Wherever it is written "saying and tell...
The Mekhilta interprets the phrase "For He is high on high" (Exodus 15:1) as describing a relationship of mutual exaltation between God and Israel. The doubling in the Hebrew, ga'o...
When the Israelites arrived at Eilim after their grueling desert journey, they found an oasis that defied all natural proportion. Twelve springs of water bubbled up from the earth,...
(Exodus 17:14) "And the L–rd said to Moses: Write this as a remembrance in the book and place it in the ears of Joshua": The early elders said: So is it with all the generations. T...
On the second day after the Israelites arrived at Sinai, Moses ascended the mountain to meet God (Exodus 19:3). The Mekhilta notes a crucial detail: God called out to Moses before ...
The Torah addresses the case of a Hebrew servant whose master gives him a wife during his term of service. In (Exodus 21:4), the verse begins with the word "If", "If his master giv...
The passage from the Mekhilta on Tractate Kaspa expounds (Exodus 22:30) "And men of holiness shall you be to me," the verse that closes the law against eating torn flesh, treifah. ...
The verse (Exodus 35:1) opens, "And Moses assembled" the whole congregation of Israel, and immediately turns to the laws of the Sabbath before the instructions for building the Tab...
Rabbi Akiva taught that there were three things Moses could not visualize on his own, no matter how great his prophetic power. God had to physically point them out to him. The firs...
The place where Israel camped before crossing the Red Sea bore a name loaded with meaning. The Mekhilta offers multiple interpretations of "Chiroth". And each one tells a different...
The Mekhilta offers a variant reading of "He is high on high" (Exodus 15:1) that relocates the mutual exaltation from Egypt to the Red Sea itself. In this version, the back-and-for...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai looked at the twelve springs and seventy palm trees at Eilim and saw something far older than a desert oasis. He saw the blueprint of creation itself. When God...
"And flesh in the field, treifah", the Torah declares that an animal torn by a predator in the field is forbidden to eat. But the Mekhilta asks: does this apply only in the field, ...
This teaching of the Mekhilta works through a tempting piece of logic and then knocks it down with a verse. The reasoning runs by way of a kal vachomer, an argument from the lesser...
The children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, and from Succoth to Eitam, and from Eitam to Pi Hachiroth. On the fifth day (of the week) they journeyed from Egypt, and th...
The Song at the Sea proclaims (Exodus 15:1) that God is "high on high," gaah gaah, a doubled expression the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael reads as pointing to two times. He is exalted ...
A small detail in (Exodus 16:1) caught the attention of the rabbis of the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael. The verse states that the Israelites journeyed from Eilim and arrived in the Wi...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael addresses a legal question about the identity of a wife given to a Hebrew servant by his master. The Torah states that if a master gives his servant "...
The Torah places Israel's encampment "between Migdol and the sea," and the Mekhilta finds layers of meaning in this geography. The word "Migdol" sounds like "gedulah", greatness. T...
Variantly: "for high on high": He exalts Himself over the exalted. With what the nations of the world exalt themselves before Him, He exacts punishment of them. In the generation o...
Variantly: "on the fifteenth day of the second month": Why is "day" mentioned? To know on which day the Torah was given to Israel. (Rosh Chodesh of the) Nissan on which Israel left...
God made a striking declaration to the Israelites at Sinai: "You have seen what I did to Egypt" (Exodus 19:4). The Mekhilta emphasizes that God was not asking the people to accept ...
The Torah states that if a master gives his Hebrew bondsman a Canaanite bondswoman "and she bears him sons or daughters," the woman and her children belong to the master (Exodus 21...
Two verses in the Torah appear to contradict each other on the subject of work during the six days before Shabbat (the Sabbath). One verse says "Six days may work be done," using a...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael opens its halakhic exposition of Passover by fixing the identity of the month named in the commandment "This month shall be unto you the beginning of ...
Of all the idols in Egypt, only one survived the plagues: Ba'al Tzefon. The Mekhilta explains that God deliberately left this single idol standing. And then commanded Israel to cam...
The generation of the Flood was destroyed by the very thing they worshipped. The Mekhilta draws a chilling connection between their sin and their punishment through a play on Hebre...
The Mekhilta asks a question of the kind it loves: why does the Torah trouble to record the exact date, "on the fifteenth day of the second month"? Scripture rarely wastes a detail...
Rabbi Eliezer Hamodai taught that Moses was one of four great tzaddikim (a righteous person) (the righteous), righteous people, to whom God gave a subtle hint about the future. The...
The Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, in its tractate Nezikin, examines the law of the Hebrew bondsman whose master gave him a Canaanite bondswoman as a wife. When the man goes free, the ...
The Mekhilta takes up the command given in Egypt, "This month shall be for you the beginning of the months" (Exodus 12:2), the verse that fixes Nissan as the first month of the Jew...
(Exodus 14:3) "And Pharaoh will say about the children of Israel: They are nevuchim in the land": "nevuchim" is "confounded," as in (Joel 1:18) "How the beasts groan! The herds of ...
The builders of the Tower of Babel were punished with the exact same thing they feared most. The Mekhilta highlights the devastating irony embedded in the biblical narrative. The m...
When the Israelites ran out of food in the desert, they did not handle it well. (Exodus 16:2) records that "the entire congregation of the children of Israel caviled against Moses ...
The passage of the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael turns to Moses near the close of his life, after the L-rd had decreed that he would not lead Israel across the Jordan into the land. Mo...
The phrase "and I brought you to Me" refers to the moment God gathered Israel before Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. But Rabbi Akiva added a detail to this scene that transforms ...
The Mekhilta is parsing the laws of the Hebrew servant in Exodus, focusing on the words "and he shall go out alone." From this the sages derive a point about marital status among b...
(Exodus 35:2) says: "And on the seventh day it shall be holy for you." The Mekhilta explains why this clarification was needed. Israel might have reasoned as follows: the daily off...
This midrash from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, concerns how to reckon the boundaries of a "year" in different legal contexts, a question that tur...
When Israel stood at the edge of the Red Sea and saw the water raging before them, their first instinct was to flee into the desert. But God had sealed that escape route too. The M...
Thus do you find with the men of Sodom, that with what they vaunted themselves before Him, He exacted punishment of them. As it is written (Iyyov 28:5-8) "A land from which bread h...
At which he said to the Holy One Blessed be He: Can it be that Your ways are like those of flesh and blood? The apitoropos makes a decree and the kalidikos abrogates it; the kalidi...
The Torah describes God bearing Israel "on eagles' wings" (Exodus 19:4), and the Mekhilta asks a pointed question: why an eagle? What makes the eagle different from every other bir...
