2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 18 of 47.
When the cupbearer described his dream to Joseph, he mentioned one small detail: "Pharaoh's cup was in my hand." The Sages heard in that single phrase the seed of an entire ritual....
Rabbi Yochanan made a startling claim about the inner life of dreams: they do not simply happen, they are shaped after the fact by the one who explains them. His proof was the cupb...
The chief baker's dream carried three baskets stacked on his head, and the rabbis read in them the long shadow of empire. The three lower baskets were the first three kingdoms that...
The portion of Miketz opens with a verse from Job: "He set an end to darkness." The rabbis turned it into a meditation on timing. God has fixed how long the world will sit in gloom...
Pharaoh wanted Joseph to take credit for reading the dream, but Joseph refused the honor. "It is not in me," he said; "God will answer." He pointed the praise straight past himself...
Pharaoh searched his court and asked, can we find such a man? The rabbis answered through the Song of Songs, tracing a line of singular souls — Abraham the one, Isaac the only, Jac...
Pharaoh renamed Joseph Tzaphenath-Paneah, and the Sages unfolded the name letter by letter: one who sees, who redeems, a prophet, a support, an interpreter, shrewd, discerning, a s...
The seven good years did not merely end; the rabbis say they slipped away from their own fullness, as if abundance itself withdrew. And the famine did not simply arrive. It crept i...
Famine pressed on the land, and Jacob saw what others could not: that in Egypt there was grain to be had. The sages hear two words hiding inside one. The Hebrew for "grain" can als...
When Jacob told his sons to go down to Egypt, he chose his word with care, and the sages catch the hint inside it. The Hebrew word for "go down," redu, carries the numerical value ...
A small phrase carries a large law. When the sages ask why a lone Jew may not lead the congregation in saying "Holy, holy, holy," they reach for the verse "and I shall be sanctifie...
How large is a congregation? The sages settle on ten, and they prove it by stitching scriptural verses together until the number holds firm. But the harder question follows: who ca...
The brothers stand before the Egyptian ruler and call themselves twelve. He pounces. Where is the missing one? They confess only that they sold him. Joseph, hiding behind his forei...
Before the brothers' eyes, Joseph had Simeon bound and led away to prison. To them it looked like cruelty. But the moment they were gone, the scene changed completely. Joseph broug...
Rabbi Yohanan once met the young son of his brother-in-law Resh Lakish and asked the boy to recite his verse. The child quoted the doubled commandment, "You shall surely tithe." Yo...
The brothers came home to Jacob and reported everything that had happened to them in Egypt. The Hebrew for what had befallen them, korot, sounds like the word for beams, and the sa...
Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go. "Harm might befall him on the way," he says, and the sages catch the precise word: on the way, not at home. From this they learn a hard truth abou...
Jacob makes his decision, and now he packs the bags. If his sons must go down to face the harsh Egyptian ruler a second time, they will not arrive empty-handed. He sends down the v...
"May God Almighty grant you mercy." The sages hear in the divine name Shaddai a hidden plea: El Shaddai, the One who says to suffering, "Enough." Jacob, squeezed dry by a lifetime ...
Joseph cannot hold the mask in place forever. He questions the brothers about their father, then his eyes fix on Benjamin, the one face that matches his own. "God be gracious to yo...
Judah draws near, and the sages cannot agree what "drawing near" means. For war, says one. For appeasement, says another. For prayer, says a third. Rabbi Elazar settles it: all thr...
Judah keeps talking, and Joseph wonders aloud why this fourth-born son speaks for them all when there are older brothers present. Judah's answer goes to the bone: the others stand ...
Joseph orders the room emptied. Every Egyptian out. The sages split over the wisdom of this. One says it was reckless, for alone with eleven shaken men, a single blow could have ki...
Before the tearful reunion, the sages pause on a sobering thought. Joseph was the youngest of the tribes, and yet when he revealed himself, his brothers were so stricken with terro...
The news raced through Pharaoh's palace like wildfire: Joseph's brothers had come. And in that royal welcome the rabbis hear an echo of the praise the nations would one day give to...
Scripture lists Jacob's household going down to Egypt and counts his sons and his sons' sons, his daughters and his sons' daughters. But Jacob had only one daughter by birth, Dinah...
The prophet Isaiah dreamed of a world made whole, where the wolf and the lamb feed side by side and no creature harms another. The rabbis found that healed world already foreshadow...
Why would Jacob send Judah ahead to Egypt before the whole family arrived? Rabbi Nechemiah hears a striking answer. Not to scout housing or arrange food, but to set up a house of s...
When Joseph brought his brothers before Pharaoh, the Torah says he chose five of them. The rabbis ask which five, and the answer reveals a careful strategist at work. Joseph delibe...
The Torah says Joseph gathered up all the money in Egypt and Canaan during the famine. The sages stretch that statement to a staggering scale. Every piece of silver and gold in the...
Scribes have always noticed something strange about the opening of the Vayechi portion. Unlike every other section of the Torah, it has no visible gap before it on the scroll. It r...
As Jacob's final days drew near, the rabbis pause over a verse from Psalms that no one can dodge: what man can live and never see death? Then they run down the list of the greatest...
Jacob feels his strength ebbing, and the verse marks the moment with a strange word: his days "drew near" to die. The sages read it as a verdict. No one rules over the day of death...
As Jacob blesses Joseph's sons, he names the power that has guarded his life: "the angel who redeems me." The sages turn this small phrase into a meditation on how God provides. Re...
The verse says "Jacob called to his sons," and the sages stop on the word "called." By rights, they joke, it should have been Esau, the elder, gathering his children with grand las...
Jacob turns first to Reuben, and the word "firstborn" opens like a fan. The sages count all the ways Reuben led: first for inheritance, first in lineage, first even in repentance, ...
Jacob does not bless Simeon and Levi so much as confront them. Their fury at Shechem, where they slaughtered a whole city without consulting their father, draws a curse not on the ...
When Jacob rebukes Reuben and Simeon, Judah goes pale. He waits for the blow, certain his father will shame him for the affair with Tamar. Instead Jacob calls him close and reassur...
The Yalkut Shimoni, a treasure trove of rabbinic commentary and aggadic stories on the Tanakh, offers us a fascinating glimpse, focusing on a very specific phrase. It all revolves ...
Jacob blesses Zebulun before his elder brother Issachar, and the sages explain the surprising order through a partnership that would echo for centuries. Zebulun dwells by the sea i...
Jacob's final blessings move swiftly from tribe to tribe. Issachar, the strong-boned donkey, would break all Israel in halakhah and raise two hundred heads of courts. Dan, called a...
When Jacob blessed Benjamin as a ravenous wolf who devours in the morning and divides at dusk, the sages heard geography in the words. The blessing was not only about a temperament...
The single verse about a wolf who devours in the morning and divides the spoil at evening opens like a fan across all of Jewish history. First it is Saul, who seized the kingship a...
Twelve tribes, the verse insists, no more and no less. This number was no accident of birth. Rebekah already glimpsed it in the womb when she was told that two nations and the seed...
When the long procession bringing Jacob home reached the threshing floor of Atad, the sages caught the oddity at once. A threshing floor for thornbushes? Thornbushes have no harves...
The procession reached the Cave of Machpelah and there stood Esau, blocking the entrance. The cave held room for four couples, he argued, and the last place was his, for he had alr...
When their father died, Joseph's brothers grew afraid. The sages ask what exactly they saw to spark the fear. While Jacob lived, Joseph had always dined with them, sharing the fami...
Joseph's reply to his frightened brothers became a treasury of teachings. From the threefold plea "please forgive" the sages learned that one need not beg pardon more than three ti...
