2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 24 of 47.
The Torah says to redeem the firstborn son, and a quick reader might assume each father has just one. The sages look closer at the wording and find a wider reach. The verse does no...
Maybe your parents didn't sign you up for piano lessons, or you never got that trip to Disney World. But what about something more fundamental, something tied to your very identity...
One Torah, four children, and four different ways of standing at the seder table. The sages hear in Scripture's repeated questions not one curious child but four distinct souls, an...
Why did Pharaoh keep saying no? A reader might think the king's stubbornness was entirely his own choosing, but the verse pairs his refusal with the words that the Holy One hardene...
Job asks a question that hangs over all of history: who has ever hardened his heart against God and come away whole? The sages take that line and walk it through the generations li...
The Psalm tells us to praise God for deeds so awesome they make His enemies tremble, and the sages hear in that line a kind of divine irony. God's justice is so finely made that th...
A startling reading is buried in the word that opens the story of the Exodus march. The Hebrew sound at the start of "and it came to pass" can be heard as a cry of woe, and the sag...
The rabbis ask a sharp question about the opening words of the portion. The verb for "let go" can be heard as the cry "woe," so they ask: who was it that cried out in grief when Is...
The midrash keeps asking who cried woe at Israel's release, and offers two more answers, each built on a small parable. First the Egyptians themselves. Imagine a city blessed with ...
Three sages press the same idea: Egypt let Israel go without grasping the worth of what it released, and paid for that blindness many times over. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai pictures a...
This long teaching defends Israel's honor and explains why redemption was earned. It opens with measure for measure: the prophet says Egypt was struck by the very stick and sword i...
The midrash rereads the phrase usually translated "God did not lead them" as "God was not comforted," and turns it into a confrontation between God and Pharaoh in the realm of the ...
Here the midrash hears in the verse a note of unresolved grief even on the very day of deliverance. The Holy One had not yet been comforted, the sages say, over the slain sons of E...
The midrash turns the journey out of Egypt into a portrait of a God who inverts every ordinary rule of rank. In the way of the world, a servant carries his master, never the revers...
This brief comment reads the verse's word "near" in a cautionary key. When the Torah says God did not lead Israel by way of the land of the Philistines because that road was near, ...
When Scripture says the LORD did not lead Israel by the way of the land of the Philistines, "for it was near" (Exodus 13:17), the sages refused to read those words as a simple matt...
The verse says God did not lead Israel by the nearest road, "for it was near" (Exodus 13:17), and one of the sages heard in those words a warning about timing. The danger of the sh...
Reading the words "for it was near" (Exodus 13:17), the sages recalled an older promise spoken to Abraham in the dread of a deep darkness. God had told him his offspring would be s...
Pressing the verse harder, the sages asked the deeper question: if the goal was the Land, why not go straight there? And they put the answer in the mouth of God Himself. Bring a fr...
The sages pushed once more on why God avoided the short road, and this time the answer turned on what the enemy did when they heard Israel was coming. Word reached the Canaanites t...
Once again the verse "for it was near" (Exodus 13:17) is read not as a measure of miles but as a measure of time, and this reading turns the eye back toward Egypt. Something was cl...
The sages found one more meaning hidden in "for it was near" (Exodus 13:17): near was an old debt of gratitude. Generations earlier, when Jacob's funeral procession passed through ...
The verse warns that God feared the people would "repent when they see war" (Exodus 13:17), and Rabbi Eliezer told the story of which war that fresh memory held. For all the years ...
Why did God not lead Israel out of Egypt along the short coastal road into the land of the Philistines? The sages offer several answers, and each one reads the freed slaves' fragil...
Scripture says that God led the people around by way of the wilderness toward the Sea of Reeds. The sages ask the obvious question. Why this hard, dangerous path rather than someth...
When the Torah says that Israel went up out of Egypt chamushim, the word is rare enough that the sages stop to define it. They reject the picture of a panicked, defenseless mob fle...
The word chamushim also echoes the Hebrew for the number five, so the sages read a startling claim into it. Only a fraction of Israel actually left Egypt. One teaching says one out...
On the night Israel finally left, the people scattered to gather the wealth of Egypt. Moses walked the other way. He went looking for a coffin. Generations earlier, Joseph had made...
Why does Scripture call Joseph "bones" while he was still alive and ruling Egypt? Rav teaches that it was because Joseph let his brothers refer to their father, Jacob, as "your ser...
The sages add a sharp word from Joseph himself. "My father came down to Egypt willingly," he said, "and I carried him back up to be buried. But I came down against my will, sold in...
When the Torah says "the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud," the sages count the word "cloud" across Scripture and arrive at seven clouds of glory. Four surrounded ...
At the wedding feast for Rabban Gamliel's son, the great sages reclined while the master of the house himself stood pouring their wine. Rabbi Eliezer was scandalized and refused th...
A single verse hides a careful choreography. As Israel journeyed out of Egypt, two guides traveled with them, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The sages noti...
From the overlap of cloud and fire the sages drew a rule for the Sabbath table. Just as the pillar of fire rose while the cloud still stood, so the Sabbath lamp should be kindled w...
When God told Israel to turn back and camp before Pi-hahiroth, He was keeping an ancient word. Long before, He had promised Abraham that his descendants would leave their bondage w...
The same ground carried two names, and the change told a whole story. The Israelites had once been driven to build the store-city of Pithom there as slaves, a place tied to Egypt's...
The journey out had a tense fourth day. Israel had traveled from Rameses through Succoth and Etham, and as they prepared their gear and animals to move on, the Egyptian escort offi...
The sages turned the single word again, the one Pharaoh used to describe Israel as he watched them wandering by the sea. Read this way, nevukhim does not mean lost so much as tangl...
Pharaoh meant to mock. Watching Israel double back to the sea, he sneered that they were leaderless and confused, that Moses had led them astray and no longer knew where he was tak...
When Pharaoh opened his mouth to gloat over the Israelites trapped between the sea and the desert, he believed he was boasting about his own military advantage. He had no idea that...
Once again the rabbis hear in Pharaoh's mouth a prophecy he could not understand. He boasted that the desert had closed in on Israel, but the deeper meaning pointed to a later gene...
Why does the verse single out Pharaoh by name when it says God will be honored through him and through all his army? The Egyptians themselves were uncertain, their hearts divided o...
God's words, "And I will be honored through Pharaoh," can be read a second way. When the Holy One, blessed be He, brings judgment upon the nations that have oppressed His people, H...
The Israelites, the sages imagine, said to themselves that whether they wished it or not, they had no choice but to obey the words of the son of Amram, Moses. So they followed his ...
Yet another reading attaches to the words "and it was turned." The moment Israel left Egypt, Egypt's empire collapsed. The Egyptians realized that the source of their power had wal...
The rabbis offer one more reading of the turning of Egypt's heart. The Egyptians suddenly understood that all the prosperity they had enjoyed had come to them on account of Israel....
When the verse says Pharaoh harnessed his chariot, the sages take it literally. With his own hands the king prepared his war-horses, though kings normally stand by while servants r...
How did Pharaoh know how big an army to muster? The midrash imagines him as a grim bureaucrat of death. During the three days of plague-darkness, many Israelites had died and been ...
