2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 15 of 47.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel sets two scenes side by side. At the Midianite well, Jethro's seven daughters came to draw water and the local shepherds drove them off, so that Moses had...
The Torah says that Jacob drew near and rolled the great stone from the mouth of the well. The same stone that ordinarily waited for all the shepherds to gather before it could be ...
Rabbi Akiva draws a quiet rule out of two betrothal stories. A traveler who arrives at a strange town and is met, right away, by young women coming out toward him should take it as...
The tradition is suspicious of kisses. As a rule, the midrash says, a kiss is mere frivolity, and only three rise above it: the kiss of office, when Samuel anointed Saul and kissed...
A second reading turns Jacob's tears into prophecy. He weeps at the very moment he meets Rachel because, even now, he foresees how it will end: she will not be buried at his side. ...
A third explanation reads Jacob's tears as embarrassment turning to shame. When he kissed Rachel at the well, he noticed the bystanders murmuring, glancing at one another and askin...
The midrash reads the meeting of Jacob and Laban as a comedy of greed. When Jacob tells Rachel he is her father's kinsman and Rebecca's son, the rabbis hear a warning and a comfort...
The Torah says Leah's eyes were tender, and generations of readers assumed it was a blemish. The sages refused to leave it there. If Scripture takes pains to speak gently even abou...
One quiet act can ripple across centuries. When Rachel handed her wedding signs to Leah and held her silence rather than expose her own claim, that restraint did not vanish. It bec...
Jacob had learned the hard way that Laban's town ran on lies, so he nailed down every term. Not just a wife, but Rachel; not just Rachel, but your daughter Rachel; the younger one,...
Anyone who has hired help knows the pattern. The first year a worker gives his full effort; by the third the diligence fades and corners get cut. Jacob broke the mold entirely. He ...
"The LORD saw that Leah was hated." Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman heard that verse inside another: "For the LORD listens to the needy, and His prisoners He does not despise" (Psalms 69:...
The pace of this household was startling. Leah carried each of her children for only seven months, and within the span of seven years Jacob's family had grown to eleven sons and a ...
Rabbi Yochanan taught that there are powers the Holy One, blessed be He, will not delegate. Angels carry out countless errands across the world, but three keys never leave God's ow...
The rabbis loved to read the human body through the architecture of a house, and here three of them do exactly that to explain a single verse about Leah. Just as a house has its hi...
Rabbi Yose bar Hanina counted four kinds of names in the world. Some names sound noble while the lives behind them rot. Esau carries a name from the verb to do, yet does no good. I...
Leah's house carried two crowns: the priesthood through Levi and the kingship through Judah. The midrash lines them up side by side and finds that whatever Scripture grants the one...
Rabbi Yohanan taught in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai that something happened with Leah's fourth son that had never happened since the world began. From the day God created Hi...
When Rachel saw that her sister was bearing sons while she remained childless, the Torah says she envied her. The rabbis flinch at the word, since Scripture warns the heart not to ...
Rachel begs Jacob for children, and instead of comfort his anger flares. The midrash judges him hard. A verse from Job becomes the rebuke: the wise man should not answer with windy...
Rachel names a son Naphtali, from a word that means twisting and wrestling. The plain reading makes the struggle hers, a contest fought between sisters. But the midrash offers a qu...
The rabbis play once more on the name Naphtali, this time hearing inside it the word nofet, the dripping sweetness of a honeycomb. Scripture calls the words of Torah sweeter than h...
When Leah's maid Zilpah bore a son, Leah cried out that fortune had come, and she named him Gad. The midrash hears a vast promise in that little word. The one destined to cut down ...
When the wheat stood ready for cutting, young Reuben went out into the fields and came back carrying mandrakes for his mother Leah. The rabbis dispute what the plant actually was, ...
Rachel saw the mandrakes in young Reuben's hands and wanted them. Leah's reply was sharp. Was it not enough that Rachel had, in Leah's eyes, taken her husband? Now she wanted the b...
When the verse says Jacob came in from the field in the evening, the rabbis hear in it a whole code of fair labor. A worker's day has limits, and an employer cannot simply impose h...
Leah went out to meet Jacob and would not let him pause even to wash his feet. Her words sound blunt, but the rabbis insist her heart was pure. The Holy One, blessed be He, saw tha...
The verse about that evening contains an extra word, a small "he" that the plain sense hardly needs. Rabbi Eliezer refuses to let it pass. To him it signals that Heaven itself had ...
When Leah named her son Issachar, declaring that God had given her reward, she set in motion a tribe defined by Torah. Though Issachar was only the ninth of Jacob's sons, his princ...
Leah named her sixth son Zebulun and said God had granted her a fine gift. The rabbis compare her to a field that keeps yielding as long as it is worked. Then came her daughter, an...
The verse says simply that God remembered Rachel, the wife who had waited so long while her sister filled the house with sons. The rabbis fix the moment precisely. Rachel was remem...
The psalmist sings that the Holy One, blessed be He, remembered His kindness and His faithfulness toward the house of Israel. The sages hear the names of the patriarchs folded insi...
Rachel names her son Joseph and prays, "May the LORD add to me another son." The sages turn that single word "another" like a gem, catching different lights. First a homely parable...
Why did Jacob press to leave Laban precisely once Joseph was born? Because Jacob perceived a deep truth, the sages teach: the line of Esau would be brought down only by the line of...
The Talmud weaves the moment of Laban's confession into a teaching about timing in the life of the spirit. Rav, in the name of his teacher, lists three pairings that must press rig...
Laban tells Jacob, "I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me for your sake," and the sages read his word for divination as "I tested and examined," the careful aud...
The midrash fills in a hidden scene that took place before Jacob ever reached Haran. The Holy One, blessed be He, sent a plague upon Laban's flocks, thinning them down until only a...
Scripture tells how Jacob took fresh rods of poplar, almond, and plane tree, peeled white streaks into them, and set them in the watering troughs. The midrash pictures the scene cl...
When the weaker animals bred, Jacob held his rods back, and the sages debate which animals these were, but agree on the outcome: "the man increased exceedingly." The midrash hears ...
Jacob does not break the news of his departure inside the house. He sends for Rachel and Leah and calls them out to the open field, where the wind carries words away and no hidden ...
The Torah says Rachel stole her father's teraphim, but it never explains what those objects were. The midrash answers with a chilling description. The teraphim, it says, were no ha...
When Jacob finally turns on Laban, his anger erupts only as words. The midrash is careful about this. "The strictness of the fathers is better than the meekness of the sons," it sa...
A single phrase from Jacob's defense -- "the rams of your flock I have not eaten" -- becomes the seed of a precise legal point. Rava reads the verse as a clue about how the Torah n...
Jacob describes twenty years of misery in one breath: scorched by drought all day, gnawed by frost all night, sleep gone from his eyes. The sages ask a practical question first. Ho...
The covenant Laban forces on Jacob hinges on a single word: affliction. "If you afflict my daughters," he warns, and the rabbis mine the phrase carefully. They read it as a guard a...
The portion of Vayishlach opens with Jacob sending messengers ahead to Esau, and three sages each raise the same worry. Should Jacob have stirred his dangerous brother at all? Rabb...
Even after everything, the Torah calls Esau Jacob's brother, and the midrash will not let that slip past: he is Esau, yes, but still the brother. The land he holds is called Seir b...
When Jacob sent his messengers ahead to Esau, he wrapped his message in caution. He did not want his brother to imagine that Jacob had walked off with the family inheritance. Inste...
