309 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, shown in source order. Page 4 of 7.
The words "in the third month" send the sages searching for threes, and they find them everywhere, woven through the whole event of revelation. The Torah itself is threefold, and R...
Proverbs describes the Torah's character in two phrases, "her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." The rabbis read this as the very reason for the timing of...
The sages open the story of Sinai with a verse from Kohelet about a neglected house: when no one tends the beams, the roof sags; when hands hang slack, the ceiling drips. The midra...
Why does the Torah place Jethro's visit and his advice about appointing judges right before the great moment of the third month at Sinai? The sages notice the order and ask what it...
Why did the giving of the Torah wait specifically for the third month after the Exodus, not the second and not the fourth? Rabbi Hoshaya answers with a teaching he received from Ra...
Rabbi Aibu hears a quiet announcement folded into the words "in the third month": the month has come at last. To explain it, he carries us back to the very first meeting between Mo...
The sages catch a small word and pull a wonder out of it. Scripture could have used the poetic word for moon, as it does for Ziv or Bul or Ethanim, but instead it says chodesh, thi...
The sages ask a pointed question: why was the Torah given in the third month? Part of the answer, they say, is to silence a complaint the nations of the world might one day raise. ...
The verse says Israel came to the wilderness of Sinai "on this day," and the sages pause over the wording. Did they really arrive on this very day? The point is not the calendar bu...
The opening word of the Ten Commandments, "I am the LORD your God," sends the sages back to a verse in Psalms about God's chariots, myriads upon myriads, with the Lord among them a...
The verse opens like a summons in court: "Hear, O My people, and I will speak" (Psalms 50:7). The rabbis hear a double meaning in it. When God says "that I may speak," Rabbi Pincha...
The Ten Commandments begin with a single word, "Anokhi" - "I." The rabbis cannot leave it alone. Rav reads it as a hidden acronym: I Myself wrote and gave this. Read the same lette...
The Pesikta deRav Kahana, a collection of Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) teachings, offers a fascinating glimpse into that moment. In Pesikta deRav Kahana 12, we find...
A passage from the Pesikta deRav Kahana, specifically section 13, where Rabbi Abba bar Kahana unpacks a verse from the prophet Isaiah (10:30): “Raise your voice, Bat-Galim, listen,...
The teaching opens with a verse from Proverbs that sounds like an exasperated parent: "How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity, and scoffers delight in their scoffing?"...
Rabbi Acha builds his teaching on a single sharp verse from Zechariah: "Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?" He hears it as a back-and-forth betwe...
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin reads a proverb as a portrait of the prophet: "A wise servant shall rule over a son who acts shamefully." The wise servant is Jeremiah. The shameful son i...
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman turns to a warning from the wilderness. God had told Israel, when they entered the land, to drive out its inhabitants, and added a caution: if you do not, ...
Rabbi Yudah son of Rabbi Simon notices a puzzle in the Torah. God promises, "A prophet I will raise up for them, like you" - like Moses. Yet the Torah itself declares, "there arose...
Rabbi Meir, quoted through a chain of teachers, offers a rule for reading Scripture. Wherever a book or prophecy opens with the term "word" or "words" - davar, divrei, devarim - wa...
Rabbi Tanhum bar Hanilai pictured the moment as a man cornering a friend in the street. See what so-and-so did to me, the man says, spitting the name of an enemy he despises. So to...
God laid a wrenching choice before the prophet. Either go down to Babylon with the exiles and I will remain in the Land, or remain here and I will descend with them. Jeremiah refus...
Jeremiah's lament over the mountains becomes, in the rabbis' hands, a portrait of a land emptied of every living thing. The prophet had cried that even the birds of the sky and the...
The rabbis read the prophet's name Yirmeyahu as Ram Yah, exalted is God, and then traced how that exalted Presence withdrew from the Temple by slow degrees. The Shekhinah did not f...
The sages mined Jeremiah's name and lineage for hidden meaning. In his days, they said, the Temple became a ruin and the strict measure of judgment rose to its full height. His fat...
Rabbi Berekhiah imagined Jeremiah measuring his own dark age against the priestly blessing, the very words his priestly forebears once spoke over Israel. My name is oppressed among...
Jeremiah came from the land of Benjamin, and the rabbis found in that tribe a mirror of the prophet's whole life. Jacob, they noted, was not fully blessed as father of the twelve t...
The ancient rabbis certainly did. They saw patterns, connections, and hidden meanings woven into the very fabric of time. Take, for instance, this passage from Pesikta DeRav Kahana...
The opening verse from Job sets the frame: far be it from God to do wrong. The sages then drew a sharp contrast between two generations. They praised the boldness of the fathers an...
Listening sounds simple, yet the rabbis count four very different outcomes that flow from it. There is the one who heard and was ruined, the one who heard and was blessed, the one ...
The verse sets a stark choice: be willing and listen, and you eat the good of the land; refuse and rebel, and you are left chewing carob-pods, the poor man's bread. Rabbi Aha turns...
At Sinai, Israel answered with two words bound together, "we will do and we will listen." Rabbi Levi pictures this as a noblewoman who brought the king two myrtle branches and lost...
The prophet asks a piercing question on God's behalf: what wrong did your fathers ever find in me? Rabbi Yitzhak first reads it as a rebuke to anyone who walks away from an open To...
A single line of Scripture, "that they went far from me," opens into a sharp charge. Rabbi Pinhas, speaking for Rabbi Hoshaya, reads it not only as people drifting away from God bu...
The prophet says Israel walked after vanity and became vain themselves. Rabbi Yitzhak tells a small parable to expose just how empty that pursuit was. Picture the son of a goldsmit...
The book of Lamentations opens with a single haunting word, Eikhah, "How." Rabbi Abbahu, citing Rabbi Yose bar Hanina, hears that same cry already sounding in the garden of Eden. T...
Rabbi Abba bar Kahana opens with a verse from Jeremiah and puts it in the mouth of the whole people. The Assembly of Israel speaks before God like a faithful spouse defending her c...
This is the story It’s a powerful myth, one that speaks to grief, absence, and the very nature of God. The story goes that when the Temple was destroyed and the Shekhinah – often u...
God is often remembered as being beyond human emotions, but Jewish tradition paints a far more nuanced picture. The source explores a fascinating passage from Pesikta DeRav Kahana,...
The prophet hears the LORD of hosts call out for the mourning women to come (Jeremiah 9:16), and the sages ask why God needs hired wailers at all. Three of them answer with a parab...
Jeremiah asks the unanswerable question, "For what cause is the land perished?" (Jeremiah 9:11), and the sages refuse to blame the obvious sins. The verse itself supplies the answe...
A single Hebrew word, Eikhah, runs through Israel's story, and the sages disagree about its tone. Rabbi Yudah hears in it reproach, the way Jeremiah scolds, "How do you say, We are...
Isaiah's cry, "How has the faithful city become a harlot" (Isaiah 1:21), opens onto a memory of Jerusalem at its height. The sages recall four hundred and eighty synagogues, each w...
Isaiah condemns a city in two short images: silver gone to dross, wine cut with water (Isaiah 1:22). The sages turn the metaphor into a small scene of everyday fraud, and it stings...
Isaiah accuses the rulers of Jerusalem of being rebels and partners of thieves who love bribes and chase payoffs (Isaiah 1:23), and the sages bring the charge down to street level ...
Isaiah introduces a heavy threat with an unusual triple title for God: "the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel" (Isaiah 1:24). The sages listen to that word for Lord...
After all the indictments, Isaiah's voice shifts toward repair, and the sages divide over what God means by "I will be eased of My adversaries and avenge Me of My enemies" (Isaiah ...
The rabbis of old explored this very idea, asking profound questions about comfort, compassion, and who is truly capable of offering it. In Pesikta deRav Kahana, a collection of ra...
