309 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, shown in source order. Page 6 of 7.
The Pesikta DeRav Kahana, a collection of Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) teachings, offers a glimpse into this radical transformation. It all starts with a verse from...
On Rosh Hashanah the year turns, and the sages mapped the whole drama of the first human onto the hours of a single day. The world itself, Rabbi Eliezer taught, was created at the ...
In Jacob's dream the ladder rose into heaven, and on it the Holy One showed him something terrible to watch. One after another, the guardian angels of the great empires climbed the...
The answer, according to ancient wisdom, lies in the sound of the shofar, the ram's horn. Yehudah bar Nachman, quoting Reish Lakish, offers a powerful image based on (Psalm 47:6), ...
"Happy is the people that knows the joyful sound" (Psalms 89:16). Rabbi Abahu pictured the five elders gathered to set the calendar, to decide when the festivals would fall. The mo...
"The path of life leads upward for the wise" (Proverbs 15:24). Rabbi Berekhiah, citing Rabbi Jeremiah, asked what that upward path actually is. His first answer: there is no path o...
"Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the concealment for our feast day" (Psalms 81:4). Rabbi Berekhiah lingered over that strange word, keseh, concealment. Which month is the hidde...
"Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who teaches you for your profit" (Isaiah 48:17). Rabbi Levi, in Rabbi Hama bar Hanina's name, heard the word "teaches" as something more physica...
"Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie" (Psalms 62:10). Rabbi Hiyya read this with a wry eye on human plans. People gossip about who will marry whom...
Why does the Torah dwell on "the seventh month"? Because it is the month bursting at the seams. Its very name hints that it is sated, packed full of commandments. The shofar is in ...
When Abraham lifted his eyes at the binding, he saw the ram, and the rabbis saw a vision inside the vision. The animal kept pulling free of one thicket only to snag in another, aga...
For most of the year, the people of Israel keep their heads down and their hands busy. There is a living to be made, fields to tend, children to raise, and the great court of heave...
Two sages, Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, were stuck on a knot. The law says that when Rosh Hashanah lands on Shabbat, the shofar is sounded in the Temple but silenced everywhere ...
Amos asks a question that sounds almost rhetorical: when a shofar sounds an alarm in a town, do the people not shudder? The rabbis heard in it the blast of Rosh Hashanah, and they ...
Rabbi Chanina bar Pappa was caught by a small phrase in a psalm: "the far seas." He brought it to Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman, who answered with an image that has comforted Jews ever ...
The prophet Joel speaks of the LORD raising His voice before a vast army, of a great and awesome day that no one can endure. The rabbis mapped that thunder onto the season of judgm...
"Tremble and sin not," sings the psalm. The sages read "tremble" as a command aimed at the wrong target inside us. Pick a fight with your own evil inclination, they said. Stir it u...
David, having sinned and longing to be received back, sings the line that became the heart of every penitent prayer: the true sacrifice God wants is a broken spirit, and a broken a...
A verse in Job declares: God is exalted in His power, and who is a teacher like Him? Rabbi Berekhiah, with an ear for languages, heard in one of its words an echo of Greek, a way o...
(Psalm 25:8) tells us, "Good and upright is Ad-nai; therefore He shows sinners the way." But what is that way? The Pesikta DeRav Kahana, a collection of homiletic teachings, explor...
Most plants, the sages noticed, want their roots tucked under the soil. Cover them and they flourish. But the nut tree is different. Bury its roots and it sickens; it wants them op...
When Reuben climbed back to the empty pit and tore his clothes, Scripture leaves a gap: where had he been? The sages fill it. One says Reuben was wrapped in sackcloth and fasting, ...
Watch how a Roman court disposes of a condemned bandit. First the clerk reads the indictment aloud. Then come the beatings. Then the irons. Then the formal sentence. And at the end...
Hosea comes to Israel like a seasoned officer sent to a rebel province who, instead of razing it, warns the people quietly: repent, before the king does to you what he did elsewher...
An arrow, the sages observed, flies only the length of a field or two before it drops. But a single act of repentance travels farther than any arrow ever could; it rises all the wa...
A person can pile up wrongdoing heap by heap, the rabbis admit, mounding sin upon sin until the stack seems beyond saving. And yet, expounding a verse from Job, Rabbi Issachar of K...
The sages nearly buried the book of Ecclesiastes. They found in it lines that sounded dangerously like license: "Rejoice, young man, in your youth... walk in the ways of your heart...
When Israel asks who will vouch for them if they repent, God gives a sobering answer. For your harm I will gladly testify, He says, citing Malachi's "I will be a swift witness" (Ma...
God sends Jeremiah with a single instruction: tell Israel to turn back. But when the prophet delivers the message, the people recoil. They are not refusing out of stubbornness. The...
A tall rock sits planted in the middle of a crossroads. Travelers keep tripping over it, day after day. The king does not haul it away all at once. Instead he tells the people, Chi...
The prophet says, Take words with you when you return to God. What kind of words? Rabbi Yudah hears a warning in it: words alone failed at Sinai, where the people flattered God wit...
The prophet hands Israel the actual words to bring before God: forgive all iniquity, receive the good. The sages turn these phrases over with great tenderness. Rabbi Nechemyah even...
A verse from Job becomes a hall of mirrors. The righteous one holds to his way, and the one of clean hands grows ever stronger. First the sages read every phrase as God Himself: He...
What does it mean that God is abundant in kindness? Rabbi Lazar paints a courtroom scene. The scale of judgment hangs perfectly even, a person's sins piled on one pan and their mer...
The verse seems harsh: God does not entirely acquit, and He visits the sins of fathers onto children for generations. The sages soften and sharpen it at once. He cleanses, but only...
After the sin of the spies, Moses pleads: forgive this people according to the greatness of Your kindness. Two sages read the words from Egypt until now in opposite directions. One...
Scripture says it plainly: one event meets the righteous and the wicked alike. The sages turn that bleak verse into a parade of paired fates. Noah, the one righteous man of his gen...
Solomon called laughter madness, and the sages let that single word carry a heavy load. First the strange joy of crowds in the theaters and arenas, hollow amusement that produces n...
To the wicked who clamor for unbroken happiness, God answers with a roll call of the great, none of whom got it. Take Adam. He was created so radiant that the apple of his heel out...
The sage reads Job's eagle as Aaron the High Priest. By the word of his mouth the Divine Presence settled upon the Ark; by his word it could be withdrawn. From there the teaching r...
A trembling verse from Job opens this short, raw teaching. At this my heart trembles and leaps from its place, the word for leaping carrying the sense of a sudden, startled spring....
This is the briefest and perhaps the most tender teaching in the whole chapter. Rabbi Berachiah takes a verse from Proverbs, also to punish the righteous is not good, and puts it a...
Rabbi Eliezer offers a pointed explanation for why Nadav and Avihu died. Their sin, he teaches, was that they ruled on a matter of law in the presence of Moses their teacher. To de...
Why does the Torah keep returning to the death of Nadav and Avihu, naming their offense again each time? The sages read this repetition as an act of mercy. Scripture spells out exa...
Why did Nadab and Abihu, the gifted sons of Aaron, die so young? The sages gathered every clue Scripture offers. Some said they entered the Sanctuary after drinking wine. Others sa...
Numbers notes that Nadab and Abihu left no children, and the sages drew out the meaning. Had they had sons, those sons would have inherited the priesthood ahead of Eleazar and Itha...
The sages noticed where the Torah places things, and they read those placements as quiet teachings. Why does the account of Miriam's death sit right beside the law of the red heife...
The Torah commands Israel to "take" the four species on the first day of the festival, and Rabbi Abba bar Kahana heard in that word an echo of Proverbs: take my instruction, not si...
