204 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Midrash Shmuel, shown in source order. Page 4 of 5.
Hear, then, how Kenesset Yisrael, the Assembly of Israel, opens her heart before the Holy One, blessed be He. She takes up the verse of the Psalmist: "When my anxious thoughts mult...
"A good name is better than good oil." So Kohelet teaches, and the sages turn the saying like a jewel in the light. Good oil sinks downward; a good name rises upward — for of Abrah...
The Holy One said to Moses, "Go, appoint Me a High Priest." "From which tribe?" Moses asked. "From Levi." Moses' heart leaped: How beloved is my own tribe! But the answer humbled a...
Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya weighed a good name against every crown a man can wear and found the crowns wanting. Priesthood ends. Kingship ends. A good name ends never. Even the Ark c...
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman opened a window into two names hidden in the Torah. The midwives the king of Egypt summoned — Shifrah and Puah — were no strangers, he taught. They were th...
The Sages taught that a person carries three names: the name his father and mother gave him, the name he gives himself, and the name written above in the book. Rabbi confessed he c...
Why does Scripture say David "lay down with his fathers," yet say Joab "died"? Is not lying down already death? Rabbi Pinchas and Rabbi Yirmiyah, citing Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba, taug...
Scripture records the passing of Samuel twice — "And Samuel died," and again, "Now Samuel was dead." Why? Rabbi Asi taught that the second verse confirms a death beyond doubt, whil...
"And there was a man in Maon," reads the verse, and the Sages lingered over every word. Rabbi Aivu taught that wherever Scripture mentions shearing, wealth stands beside it — and N...
When David's servants came to Nabal asking for provision, Nabal sneered: "Who is David?" Was the man secure on anything more than two drops of oil with which Samuel had anointed hi...
When David swore a furious oath against the household of Nabal — "So may God do to the enemies of David, and more also, if I leave him so much as one that pisseth against the wall"...
"Let this not be a stumbling block to you" — so Abigail warned David, and the sages mined her words for myriads of meanings. Rabbi Levi taught the passage, and Rabbi Ze'ira sent a ...
"And it came to pass about ten days later, that the LORD smote Nabal, and he died." Why ten? The sages taught that the timing of a death tells its nature. To die after one day is a...
The Torah warns: a man or a woman who keeps a ghost or a familiar spirit shall be stoned (Leviticus 20:27). Rabbi Levi, in the name of Rabbi Hama bar Rabbi Hanina, read the verse a...
"He went, he and his two men with him." The Maggid leans close. Who were these two who walked at the king's side toward Ein Dor in the dark? Avner and Amasa, says the tradition. Sa...
The night was a betrayal folded inside a betrayal. Saul, who had himself banished the necromancers from the land, now crept in disguise to the woman of Endor and begged, "Divine fo...
When Saul, abandoned by Heaven on the eve of his last battle, came in disguise to the necromancer of Endor, he asked her to raise the spirit she would not name. "Bring up Samuel fo...
When Saul, desperate on the eve of battle, sought the dead prophet through the woman of Endor, he asked her, "What form is he of?" Did the king not know his own teacher? The sages ...
On the eve of the battle of Gilboa, Saul cried out, "I am sore distressed; the Philistines make war against me." Rabbi Yitzchak bar Chiyya asked: why did he not inquire of the Urim...
Why did the first king of Israel fall? Scripture does not soften it: "So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD" (1 Chronicles 10:13). The Sages count five ...
Why does Scripture sometimes double its words — "and he said, and he said"? Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught: such a doubling is never idle. It opens a door for the darshan. When the...
When David lifted his lament over the fallen king, he turned to the women of the land: "O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in crimson, with delights, who put or...
When David cried, "Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God," the sages heard a man pleading innocent of every death laid at his door. Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin, in the name of Rabbi Levi...
The sages weighed the law of the captive woman and the law of refuge, and from those measures of judgment they came to Joab, chief of David's captains. When Solomon's throne was ri...
Over the bodies of the slain on Gilboa, David raised his lament, and the Maggid teaches that every word of it carries a hidden weight. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan...
The Sages gathered to read a single verse, and from its words they drew out an army. Scripture says of David that he assembled "all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand." Thir...
When the Ark of the LORD came up into the City of David, David danced and leaped before it with all his strength. But Michal, daughter of Saul, watched from her window and her hear...
That night the word of the LORD came to Natan the prophet, and Rav taught that it carried "deep counsel." For David longed to raise a house for God, yet the answer would be no. The...
Scripture seems to contradict itself: God tells David both "Shall you build?" and "You shall not build" the Temple. The resolution: David would not raise the House, yet it would be...
When Nathan brought God's word to David — "And I was with you wherever you went" — the Sages heard an echo of an older promise. To Jacob, God had said, "Return to the land of your ...
The verse promises, "And I will appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant them" (2 Samuel 7:10). What kind of planting is this? Our sages drew the answer out of the Song...
"When your days are fulfilled," the Holy One promised David (2 Samuel 7:12). And Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman heard in those words a tender precision: full days I count for you, David,...
When the prophet Nathan came to David, the sages say, the word reached him in two ways at once — in plain speech and in vision: "According to all these words, and according to all ...
When King David heard the LORD's promise that his house would endure, the verse says he "came and sat before the LORD" and asked, "Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that ...
When the prophet Nathan brought the LORD's promise of an everlasting house, David bowed and said, "And yet this was a small thing in Your eyes." Rabbi Simon heard in those words a ...
The Maggid leaned in over the verse: "And who is like Your people Israel?" The sages caught a riddle hidden in the letters. One scripture says God went to redeem Israel — singular,...
When David conquered Rabbah, he lifted the crown of the Ammonite king and set it on his own head. Scripture says its weight was a full talent of gold, set with a precious stone. Th...
The verse marvels that in all Israel no man was as handsome as Absalom, and it lingers over the cutting of the hair of his head. The sages of Israel asked what manner of vow bound ...
The Maggid leaned in over the open scroll. "Look how Scripture lingers on a name," he said. "Barzillai the Gileadite — the old man who fed King David in his flight and walked him a...
Hear how the Holy One keeps His eyes upon the righteous, never withdrawing them, lifting them with kings upon the throne. Rabbi Levi taught that the eyes of such ones gleam like sa...
The Maggid leans in and asks: why does Scripture send hunger after the very men God loved most? Why was Abraham driven down to Egypt by famine the moment he arrived in the Promised...
The sages counted ten famines that came into the world, and walked them down the spine of Scripture. The first struck in the days of Adam, when the ground was cursed for his sake. ...
Rabbi Berekhiah, in the name of Rabbi Abba bar Kahana, turned the prophet's question on its head. "Shall I be pure with wicked scales, and a bag of deceitful weights?" cried Micah....
When famine gripped the land three years running, David did not blame the heavens. He sent his people through Israel to search out the hidden sin that locks the rain away. Is there...
After Saul's house had broken faith with the Gibeonites, seven of his sons were given over and hanged on the hill before the LORD. They hung for seven months, from the close of the...
David summoned the Gibeonites and asked what quarrel they kept with the house of Saul. They answered that Saul had slain seven of their men, naming each by his humble craft, and th...
The Song That Forgives the Past Listen, and hear how a single word can unlock a verse. David cries out, "Where are Your former kindnesses?" — and Scripture answers him with "these ...
The Maggid leaned in. Listen, he said, to how the sages read the last words of David, son of Jesse. "The utterance of David son of Jesse" — the lofty one, son of the lofty one. "Th...
