351 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Nach, shown in source order. Page 3 of 8.
One small verb, to draw near, carries three very different human postures, and the sages laid them side by side. When the children of Judah came up to Joshua, the word for their ap...
Caleb opens his plea to Joshua with a date: "I am forty years old this day." From that single timestamp the sages reconstructed the entire chronology of Israel's portable sanctuary...
How long did Israel actually hold the land, from the first foot across the Jordan to the bitter exit into exile? The tradition gives a precise figure: four hundred and fifty years,...
Caleb's age, forty years old at the sending of the spies, becomes the key to an astonishing genealogical claim: that in the earliest generations of Israel, men were fathering child...
Joshua records that Hebron was given to Caleb, but a difficulty leaps out: Hebron was a designated city of refuge, set aside for those who killed by accident, so how could it becom...
When Joshua's account calls Hebron the home of "the greatest man among the Anakim," the sages refused to read it as praise for a mere giant. They unpacked the phrase word by word a...
Why, asked the sages, did the Canaanites keep their land for forty-seven years before Israel arrived? Scripture had already taught that the Land of Israel measures every nation by ...
The verse names a giant, "the great man among the Anakim," and the sages startle us: this is Abraham. But why crown him with the word great? Several answers gather around the quest...
The border that climbs to the shoulder of the Jebusite hides one of the great searches in Israel's story: where exactly should the Temple stand? David and Samuel, the sages say, sa...
A single town in the book of Joshua carries an oddly crowded list of names. It is called Debir, and Kiriath-Sefer, and Danah, and Kiriath-Sannah, four titles for one place. The sag...
The town once known as Kiriath-Sefer, the City of the Book, gave its other name, Debir, to the sages as a small linguistic clue. Rava noticed something that links Israel's Scriptur...
When Moses died, Israel did not only lose its teacher; it lost his learning. During the days of mourning, the sages say, one thousand seven hundred teachings vanished from memory: ...
Rabbi Yonatan counted four people in Scripture who made vows or set conditions carelessly, leaving the outcome dangerously open. Three of them were rescued by Heaven from their own...
When Othniel ben Kenaz captured the city, the sages heard in that moment a rhythm older than any single life. "The sun rises and the sun sets," wrote Kohelet. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana...
A single hero earns three different family names in Scripture, and the Sages refuse to let the contradiction slide. Othniel, who conquered Kiriath-sefer, is called the brother of C...
When Achsah came to her new husband Othniel, she stirred him to ask her father for more than a dry inheritance. The Sages hear her words as a sharp parable. A donkey with no straw ...
A list of obscure desert towns in Joshua looks like nothing more than a surveyor's ledger, and at first that is exactly how Rav Ashi reads it for his questioner. Of course these ar...
How was the Land actually divided? The Sages debate whether the count followed those who left Egypt or those who entered Canaan, and out of that argument comes a startling rule: in...
The Sages stack three crowns on the daughters of Zelophehad, and they prove each one from the text. First, the five sisters were perfectly equal, weighed against one another so exa...
The story of how David won Jerusalem begins, the Sages say, with a calf running away from Abraham's kitchen. Chasing the animal into the Cave of Machpelah, Abraham glimpsed Adam an...
A single place-name in Joshua, Taanath-shiloh, sets off two reflections, one mournful and one tender. Rabbi Chama bar Chanina hears in the word a sigh. Anyone who beholds Shiloh, w...
The first division of the Land was a careful act of fairness, not a simple carving of equal acres. Because a measure of fertile Judah was worth five times the same measure in Galil...
The boundary lines drawn through the land of Israel were never only lines on a map. They were threads of longing. When the inheritance of Joseph reached toward the territory of Ben...
The descendants of Joseph came to Joshua with a complaint that sounded like pride. Why only one lot, one portion, when we are so numerous and the LORD has blessed us beyond measure...
The land of Israel was apportioned by lot, tribe by tribe, so that no one could claim a portion was seized by favor or by force (Numbers 26:55). Yet two men received their inherita...
When the land of Israel was finally divided, the verse names those who carried out the division. Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the heads of the ancestral houses of the...
When the LORD told Joshua to set aside the cities of refuge, the command came in a stern verb (Joshua 20:1-2). The sages noticed the sharpness of the word and asked why the passage...
The Torah promises a place of safety for the one who kills without intent (Joshua 20:3). But who exactly qualifies? The Mishnah works through the question with the precision of peo...
The laws of the unintentional killer turn on questions of place, permission, and motion. A man tosses a stone into a public road and it strikes someone dead; he is exiled, for he h...
The cities of refuge were not scattered at random. The Rabbis taught that Moses set apart three east of the Jordan, and Joshua matched them with three in the land of Canaan, so tha...
Three rabbis traveled to study Torah with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and when the lessons ended they could not bring themselves to leave only once. They took their leave, lingered, a...
The Parthian king Artaban once sent Rabbi Judah the Prince a pearl beyond price, and asked for something equally precious in return. Rabbi Judah sent back a single mezuzah, the sma...
When the tribes of Reuben and Gad built their altar by the Jordan, they swore their innocence by stacking the divine names: "God, God, the LORD, God, God, the LORD, He knows." Why ...
The opening of Joshua's farewell speech reminds Israel that their ancestors once lived far away, beyond the Euphrates, as idolaters. The sages caught something in that line: histor...
In Joshua's review of Israel's history, he singles out the crossing of the Jordan and the battle at Jericho. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani explained why that one city mattered so much ...
Joshua warns the people that the One they serve is "a holy God," and the plural-sounding Hebrew word for God, elohim, became a battleground. Heretics came to Rabbi Simlai with a po...
Joshua describes God with a strangely plural phrase, "a holy God," using a word for holy that reads almost like "holy ones." The sages refused to let that plural slide into a hint ...
Joshua waited until he was near death before he turned to Israel and challenged them: if serving the LORD seems evil in your eyes, choose now whom you will serve. The sages noticed...
When Israel was faithful, they could vouch for themselves. Joshua told the people that they were their own witnesses to the covenant, and that was enough. But once the lying began,...
The verse seems simple until you press on it. Joshua "wrote these words in the book of the Torah of God." Which words, and how could Joshua add anything to a Torah given through Mo...
Joshua stood at the head of Israel for thirty-eight years after Moses, guiding the tribes through conquest and settlement. He was the bridge between the wilderness generation and t...
Joshua was buried at Timnath-serah, on the north side of a place called Mount Gaash. The name means "quaking," and the rabbis refused to treat it as an accident of geography. Rav t...
Two verses seem to argue with each other. One says Moses carried up the bones of Joseph; another credits the children of Israel with bringing them up out of Egypt. So who really di...
Behind a quiet burial verse the rabbis found a precise point of inheritance law. When does a husband inherit his wife's property, and when does he not? The principle they drew out ...
Even something as seemingly straightforward as who inherits what can have fascinating, and sometimes surprising, origins in Jewish thought. to one such discussion from the Yalkut S...
Rabbi Aha bar Hanina offered a startling idea. If Israel had never sinned, the entire written tradition would have been short: the Five Books of Moses and the book of Joshua, no mo...
The book of Judges opens after the death of Joshua, and the first thing the people ask is who shall lead the fight to take the land. God answers in a single word: Judah. The midras...
Adoni-Bezek was a small king, not even reckoned among the great rulers of Canaan. Yet when Israel finally caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes, he confessed something sta...
