204 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Midrash Shmuel, shown in source order. Page 3 of 5.
Scripture praises Saul: there was no man among the children of Israel better than he. Yet the Sages teach restraint. Was he best in every respect? No. The verse itself narrows the ...
Saul climbed the ascent toward Ramah, still hunting his father's lost donkeys, when young women came down to draw water. They lingered over their answer to him, and the sages asked...
When the prophet Samuel tells the maidens that the people will not eat "until he comes, because he blesses the sacrifice" (1 Samuel 9:13), the Sages hear in it the whole architectu...
The Maggid draws his proof from the prophet Amos: "Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but He revealeth His counsel unto His servants the prophets." Hear, then, how the Holy One h...
The verse promised Samuel: "At this time tomorrow I will send you a man out of the land of Benjamin... for I have seen My people, because its cry has come to Me." But Israel had cr...
Saul, lost and searching, came to Samuel and the prophet announced himself grandly: "I am the seer." But the Holy One overheard that word. "You see, Samuel? I will show you that yo...
When the prophet Samuel poured oil over the head of Israel's first king, he reached not for a horn but for a flask. The sages read meaning into the vessel. From the flask were anoi...
A stranger came to where Rabbi Yannai and Rabbi Yonatan sat, and laid a riddle before them. The prophet Samuel had told Saul, "When you depart from me today, you will meet two men ...
When Nahash the Ammonite came up against Jabesh-gilead, he set a cruel condition for any covenant of peace: the men of the city must let him gouge out every right eye. Why the righ...
When Samuel stood before all Israel to lay down his office, he did not say merely that he had grown old. He said, "I have grown old and grey" — zakanti ve-savti — pressing one word...
When Samuel grows old and steps down, he stands before all Israel and demands the most dangerous accounting a leader can ask for. "Whose ox have I taken? Whom have I defrauded?" He...
Hear how Samuel opened the people's eyes. "The Lord," he said, "who made Moses and Aaron"—and the sages took those two names and laid them against a verse from the Song: "Your two ...
When the prophet Samuel reminded Israel that the Lord had sent "Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel" to deliver them, the Sages asked why Scripture paired such seemingly...
"And now stand still, that I may reason with you," Samuel tells Israel — and the sages heard in that word "stand" the echo of a great chain. Rabbi Yirmiyah, in the name of Rabbi Sh...
"You plucked up a vine from Egypt," sings the psalmist, and the Sages read all of Israel into that single climbing plant. A vine is never planted in a tangle but in ordered rows — ...
The sages set two verses face to face. One promises that the LORD will not abandon His people "for the sake of His great name." The other promises that He will not forsake "His inh...
A Year Old When He Became King The verse puzzles us: "Saul was a year old when he became king" (I Samuel 13:1). How can a grown man be a year old? The Sages answer that on the day ...
When Saul's famished troops fell upon the spoil and ate over the blood, the king cried out: "Slay them here — ba-zeh!" The Rabbis listen to that little word and hear a teaching ins...
When King Saul swore that any man who tasted food before evening would die, his son Jonathan had not heard the oath. Passing through the forest, he reached out his staff, dipped it...
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." Hear it first as a wedding: the man who betroths and lingers sickens the heart, while the man who betr...
Rabbi Chanina taught a rule about how the Holy One, blessed be He, settles His accounts. He never strikes a nation first. First He brings down that nation's prince in the heavens a...
When Israel had a king at last, even the counting changed. Before Saul reigned, the people were numbered with pebbles, with Bezek; once a crown sat on his head, they were numbered ...
When the time came to strike Amalek, Saul first sent word to the Kenite: depart, lest you be swept away with them, "for you showed kindness to all the children of Israel." The Magg...
When the prophet commanded that Amalek be utterly destroyed, Saul and the people spared Agag. Bar Kappara taught that the seed left alive in this mercy was Doeg, a man so dangerous...
When Samuel turned to leave, a robe tore in his hand. Whose robe? Rav and Levi argued: one said it was Saul's garment, the other said it was Samuel's own. And reason favors the sec...
When the verse says that Samuel "hewed Agag in pieces" before the LORD at Gilgal, the sages refused to let the word pass lightly. What did that hewing look like? Rabbi Abba bar Kah...
When God told Samuel, "Fill your horn with oil and go to Jesse," the sages heard four hidden verbs in a single command. God chose David, as it is written, "Happy is he whom You cho...
When the Holy One sent the prophet Samuel to anoint a new king, the word came: "I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite" (I Samuel 16:1). Why does Scripture name the town — Beit ...
When the LORD sent Samuel to anoint a new king, He did not say merely "a king." He said, "for I have seen among his sons a king for Me." On that small word turns a great teaching. ...
When Samuel came to Bethlehem, the elders trembled and asked, "Comest thou peaceably?" From their dread the sages drew a lesson on honor between teacher and student. Rabbi Yochanan...
When the prophet Samuel came to Jesse's house to anoint a king, his eye fell first on Eliab, tall and commanding. But the LORD warned him: "Look not on his appearance." Why was Eli...
When the prophet Samuel first laid eyes on the youth brought before him, he saw the color rise in the boy's face, ruddy and flushing red. The prophet's heart sank. "This one too is...
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman taught with a memory-key. To fix in mind who said what, he made signs of the letters: DYASH, ISHAKH, KSHDKH. For he heard, in the closing verses of Psalm 1...
When Saul sought a man to soothe him, one of his young men spoke of David son of Jesse, and the verse he uttered was richer than it seemed. "Skilled in playing," said the servant —...
The verse names a place where blood once ran: Pas Dammim. Rabbi Yochanan called it the red field. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman read deeper — there, he said, the blood ceased, for the P...
When King Amaziah grew proud after striking Edom, Joash warned him in words the sages never forgot: "Why provoke trouble, that you should fall?" From this, taught Rabbi Chanina, th...
For forty days the giant came down at dawn and dusk and bellowed across the valley at the ranks of Israel. The sages listened for the meaning hidden inside his boast. Rabbi Yochana...
When Naomi turned back toward Bethlehem, two daughters-in-law walked at her side. Ruth clung and would not let go. But Orpah walked forty paces, wept four tears upon Naomi's neck, ...
When Jesse loaded provisions for the camp, the verse seemed plain: ten cheeses to the captain, bread and grain to the sons. But the sages heard more. Those "cheeses," they said, we...
When Saul dressed David in his own armor, a wonder showed itself: the openings of the breastplate sat upon the shepherd boy as though forged for him, neither sagging low nor riding...
When the giant Goliath looked upon David coming toward him, he sneered, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with staves?" The Hebrew word he hurled in scorn was maqlot — staves, stick...
When Goliath roared, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds and the beasts," the giant did not know he was sealing his own doom. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana taught that the...
When David reached into the bag and slung his single stone, it did not merely strike — it sank. Yehudah bar Rabbi taught that it pressed into Goliath's forehead the way a finger pr...
When David walked back from the valley with the giant's head swinging from his fist, Saul turned to Abner and asked the question that had nothing to do with the boy's name and ever...
When word reached the camp of the Philistines that David had taken a wife, their captains thought they had found a crack in his armor. "Is it not written in the Torah," they said, ...
"And Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, and to kill him in the morning." The Maggid pauses on that ambush and reads it through the prophet Ezekiel, who thundered a...
When Saul sent men to seize David in the night, it was Saul's own daughter who outwitted him. Michal took the teraphim and laid them in the bed, dressing the lifeless image to look...
When Scripture says, "And David fled from Naioth in Ramah," the sages heard a riddle about how fathers and sons differ in their speech. Rabbi Zechariah and Rabbi Yonatan bar Ḥaggai...
