1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 7 of 32.
"And the heart of Pharaoh was reversed" (Exodus 14:5). The Mekhilta reads this reversal not as a change of mind about letting Israel go, but as the collapse of an empire. When Isra...
The Mekhilta continues its catalog of arrogant rulers brought low by the very thing they boasted about, and few figures in the Hebrew Bible boast as spectacularly as Nebuchadnezzar...
After every other plea had been rejected, Moses turned to his nephew Elazar, the son of his brother Aaron. And threw himself at his feet. "Elazar, my brother's son," Moses said, "i...
The Mekhilta comments on God's designation of Israel as "a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6), connecting it to the verse in (1 Chronicles 17:21): "And who is like Your nation, Israel, one...
This midrash from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, expounds the verse "Do not place your hand with an evildoer to be a corrupt witness" (Exodus 23:1)...
The nations will clang to us like a bell, saying: Now if these (Jews), who were under their thumb, they let go and they left, why should we send to Aram Naharayim and to Aram Tzova...
The Mekhilta adds two more names to its list of nations whose arrogance led to their precise downfall: the great city of Tyre and its ruler Malchah (identified with the prince of T...
Here R. Chanina b. Akiva weighs two famous moments of vision in the Torah and asks whose seeing was the more cherished by Heaven. He rules: "More beloved" was the seeing of our fat...
Moses came down from the mountain and "called to the elders of the people" (Exodus 19:7). The Mekhilta draws a lesson about leadership from this simple narrative detail: Moses did ...
"and he shall bring him near to the door or to the door-post": The door is being compared to the door-post, viz. Just as a door-post stands in its place, so, the door must be stand...
The Mekhilta cites one of the most arrogant speeches in all of Scripture to illustrate the hubris of empire. The king of Assyria declared: "My hand found, as a nest, the wealth of ...
The Mekhilta concludes its extended discussion of Tyre and its ruler Malchah by citing the prophetic verdicts that sealed their fate. And then draws a sweeping theological conclusi...
The Mekhilta asks a triumphant question: how do we know that all of Moses' many requests, his desperate pleas to enter the Promised Land, were ultimately granted by the Holy One, B...
When God offered the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the entire nation responded with one of the most remarkable declarations in all of Scripture. As the Mekhilta explains,...
The Torah prescribes a vivid ritual for a Hebrew servant who refuses to go free after six years of service: "Then his master shall bore his ear" with an awl against a doorpost (Exo...
The Mekhilta explains how a capital case is decided by a court of twenty-three judges. If twelve judges vote to acquit and eleven to convict, the defendant is acquitted, the majori...
The Song of the Sea declares: "A horse and its rider He has cast into the sea" (Exodus 15:1). But this statement raises an immediate question. Was there really only one horse? The ...
The Mekhilta describes a stunning moment in which God showed Moses a panoramic vision of the future, including the mighty Samson, son of Manoach. The proof that Samson was included...
Moses carried God's message to the people of Israel. He delivered the divine offer: accept the Torah, become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The people responded with unani...
When the Torah describes the ear-boring of a Hebrew bondsman who chooses to remain in service, it says "his ear" shall be pierced. But which ear, left or right? The Mekhilta determ...
The Mekhilta addresses one of the most dramatic scenarios in ancient Jewish jurisprudence: a capital case in which the court is perfectly deadlocked. Eleven judges vote to acquit. ...
The Mekhilta draws attention to a strange detail about the drowning of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. When God cast "a horse and its rider" into the sea, something happened that...
The phrase "until Dan" appears in the vision God granted Moses from Mount Pisgah (Deuteronomy 34:1). But the Mekhilta raises an obvious problem: at the time of Moses, the land had ...
Where exactly on the ear is the bondsman pierced? The Mekhilta records a dispute between two authorities. Rabbi Yehudah said the piercing goes through the lobe, the soft, fleshy pa...
(Exodus 23:3) commands: "Do not honor a poor man in his quarrel." The Mekhilta asks why this verse is needed when (Leviticus 19:15) already says: "You shall not favor a poor man an...
The Mekhilta turns to the prophet Daniel's vision of the four kingdoms, focusing on the terrifying image assigned to Greece. In (Daniel 7:6), the kingdom of Greece appears as a leo...
The Mekhilta notices a subtle but important contradiction in the Song of the Sea and resolves it with a vivid image of what actually happened to the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Se...
The phrase "until Dan" appears not only in Moses' vision but much earlier in the Torah, when Abraham "pursued them until Dan" (Genesis 14:14) during his rescue of his nephew Lot. T...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael examines God's words to Moses in the days before the revelation at Sinai: "Behold, I shall come to you in the thickness of the cloud" (Exodus 19:9). T...
When a Hebrew slave chooses to remain in servitude rather than go free at the end of his six-year term, the Torah prescribes a specific ritual: his master takes an awl and bores th...
Abba Chanan said in the name of Rabbi Elazar: "Do not honor a poor man in his quarrel" actually refers to the agricultural gifts owed to the poor, leket (gleanings), shikchah (forg...
The Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael, the early halakhic and aggadic commentary on Exodus, here pauses on the prophet Daniel's vision of four kingdoms. Asking "What is written of the fou...
When Moses stood on Mount Nebo and looked out over the Promised Land, God pointed to each region and revealed not just the terrain but the history that would unfold upon it. The Me...
Rabbi Yehudah explains a remarkable exchange between God and Moses at Sinai. God told Moses: I will speak something to you, and you will return an answer to Me, and then I will ack...
(Exodus 23:4) commands: "If you encounter the ox of your foe, or his donkey, straying, return shall you return it to him." The Mekhilta asks: does "encounter" mean literal physical...
Rabbi Yossi HaGlili told a parable to explain one of the most staggering miscalculations in the history of Egypt. A man inherited a beth kor of land, a sizable property. And sold i...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, commenting on the Song at the Sea, draws out a principle of divine justice from the prophets. The Holy One Blessed be He is not destined to exact pun...
Before Moses died, God showed him the future of every tribe of Israel, a panoramic vision of the land and its leaders stretching across generations. The Mekhilta asks: how do we kn...
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) offers a different reading of the events at Sinai, one that elevates Moses's stature even further. He argues that we would only need to "acknowledge th...
The Torah describes the Hebrew bondsman who, after six years of service, declares his love for his master and refuses to go free. His ear is then bored against the doorpost, and th...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai offered his own version of the parable about Egypt's catastrophic miscalculation, and his telling amplified the scale of the blunder dramatically. A man inh...
The Song at the Sea opens (Exodus 15:1) with the words "the horse and its rider He cast into the sea." The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael asks why both the horse and its rider are named...
Rebbi, the great Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, offered a precise definition of a word that usually sounds limitless. When the Torah says a Hebrew servant "shall serve him forever" (Exodus ...
"The ox of your foe", who is the "foe" the Torah refers to? The Mekhilta records multiple interpretations. In one reading, the idolators of the nations are called "foes" of Israel ...
The Torah says simply that Pharaoh "harnessed his chariot" (Exodus 14:6). The Mekhilta reads those four words as a revelation of just how consumed Pharaoh was by his obsession to r...
Antoninos, the Roman emperor who maintained a famous friendship with Rabbeinu Hakadosh (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the compiler of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law)), once...
When God took Moses to the summit of Mount Pisgah and showed him the entire Promised Land, the vision included far more than hills and valleys. The Mekhilta asks: how do we know th...
At Sinai the Torah twice describes Moses relaying messages between God and Israel, and the Mekhilta asks which specific words these brief reports refer to. The verse states simply ...
