2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 31 of 47.
The Sages weighed a delicate question about the Temple service. The most holy offerings normally had to be slaughtered on the north side of the altar. But what if a priest slaughte...
The verse names only two kinds of offering, the burnt offering and the peace offering, when it speaks of sacrificing upon the altar. So the Sages asked the natural follow-up questi...
The phrase "in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned" looks like it scatters God's presence everywhere. The Sages refused that easy reading. One school heard it as a re...
When the Torah speaks of building an altar of stones, the Sages counted the word "stones" appearing three times in Deuteronomy and read each repetition as pointing to a real altar ...
Rabbi Yishmael laid down a rule of reading: nearly every "if" in the Torah signals something optional, but three of them are commands in disguise. Bringing a first-fruits meal offe...
The laws of civil justice open with a small word, "and these," and the Sages refused to read it as throat-clearing. They tied it to the verse "the strength of a king loves justice"...
The Sages liked to find Torah hidden inside the prophets' arithmetic. They read Hosea's odd purchase price, fifteen pieces of silver plus a chomer and a letech of barley, as a code...
How long must a teacher keep teaching? Rabbi Akiva anchored the duty in Scripture itself. The command to "put it in their mouths" means you stay with a student until he truly has i...
The Sages handed down a rule that sounds like patience but cuts much deeper: be deliberate in judgment. Bar Kappara found this written into the very seam of the Torah. The verse wa...
Abaye came upon his teacher Rav Yosef doing something that gave him pause: pressuring a husband into giving his wife the bill of divorce a court had ruled he owed her. Abaye raised...
The verse "before them" had already barred foreign courts. Now it is read again to bar something closer to home: cases brought before laymen rather than properly ordained judges. T...
The chapter of civil law opens with a small word, "and these," and the Sages crowded around it. Rabbi Ishmael heard in it a claim of pedigree. The laws of damages and debts are not...
The opening law of the chapter concerns a man at his lowest. He has stolen, he cannot repay, and so the court sells him into a fixed term of labor to make his victim whole. This is...
A man who has fallen into a Hebrew servant's term is still a brother, and the Sages built a wall of dignity around him. The Torah forbids working him with "the service of a slave,"...
The six-year term is a debt of labor, and the Sages asked what happens when the years do not run smoothly. Take the servant who runs away in the middle of his term. The verse says ...
The Sages gathered several laws that all hinge on counting a year from day to day rather than from the calendar's turning, and among them stands the six-year term of the Hebrew ser...
When a man sold himself into Hebrew servitude, a hard question arose at the threshold of his master's household. Could his master hand him a Canaanite maidservant as a wife, and wa...
A single verse settled two tangled questions about lineage and release. "The woman and her children" teaches that the children share their mother's standing, and the sages pressed ...
The Torah says a Hebrew servant "shall go out by himself," and the sages asked why this is needed when the six years of service already imply release. They answered that the words ...
Rabbi Tarfon offered a startling path out of a hereditary stain. A man of forbidden birth, a mamzer, passes that disqualification to his children, and it seems no remedy can reach ...
A master frees a maidservant but tries to keep her unborn or infant child in bondage. He declares, "You are a free woman, but your child remains a slave." Can his words split a mot...
The Torah lets a Hebrew servant who reaches the end of his term choose to remain, having his ear pierced at the doorpost as a sign. But the sages set strict conditions around that ...
A brief teaching draws a sharp line around the rite of piercing the ear. The Torah permits a Hebrew servant who loves his master to stay on, marked by an awl driven through his ear...
The verse "and to your maidservant you shall do likewise" links the Hebrew maidservant to the servant whose ear is pierced. At first glance the comparison might suggest she too is ...
The Torah lets a Hebrew bondsman who refuses to go free declare his love for the household and stay on, his ear pierced at the doorpost. The Rabbis read that declaration as a check...
When a Hebrew bondsman chooses to stay, his master brings him "to the judges" and "to the door," and there pierces his ear. The Rabbis comb through every detail. First, the man mus...
Rabbi Yishmael names a startling principle: in three places the oral tradition overrides the plain words of the Torah. Scripture commands covering slaughtered blood with dust, shav...
Two paths lead a Hebrew man into servitude, and the Rabbis insist they are not the same. A man whom the court sells to repay his theft serves six years only. A man who sells himsel...
A single word, "the awl," with its definite article, opens a small door. Just as "the thigh" elsewhere means the most prominent part of the thigh, so "the awl" hints at the largest...
Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai polished five teachings into a single string of jewels, and each turns on the same instinct: read the small detail and you uncover the heart of the matte...
The Torah lets a father, in dire poverty, sell his daughter as a maidservant, and the Rabbis fence the law tightly. Scripture speaks only of a minor girl, never an adult, learned f...
How does a man legally acquire a Hebrew maidservant from her father? The Talmud debates the method. By verbal link to the verse "if he takes another wife," she is acquired by a wri...
The rabbis are working out a quiet but pointed question: when a young daughter labors, who has a claim to what her hands produce? Rav Huna anchors the answer in a single verse abou...
The sages read this almost like a ledger, listing the formal authority a father holds over an unmarried daughter and then defending each item from Scripture. He may arrange her bet...
A man buys a Hebrew maidservant, and the Torah anticipates that the arrangement may sour. "If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master" sets the scene, and the rabbis are caref...
This dense passage works through two paths out of servitude for the Hebrew maidservant: redemption and designation as a wife. The first teaches a kind of sliding scale. She can buy...
The Torah allows a master who has acquired a Hebrew maidservant to designate her as a wife for his own son. The rabbis seize on the precise wording, "for his son he shall designate...
A short phrase, "he shall do for her according to the law of daughters," sends the rabbis searching. The puzzle is circular. If the law of daughters is exactly what the Torah is in...
Three Hebrew words, she'erah, kesutah, onatah, carry the weight of an entire marriage. The rabbis pull them apart word by word, and the very fact that they disagree about which wor...
The Torah declares that if a master fails to do "these three," the maidservant goes free. The rabbis first settle what the three are. Not food, clothing, and conjugal rights, they ...
The Torah promises a Hebrew maidservant freedom: "And she shall go out free, without money." The Sages refused to let a single phrase rest on one meaning. Rabbi Yose the Galilean h...
Six short Hebrew words, "one who strikes a man so that he dies," and the Sages built an entire architecture of justice on them. They began by narrowing the crime. A slap is not mur...
Two men have killed. One did it on purpose; one did it by pure accident. Neither crime was seen, so no human court will ever convene over them. The verse hands the case to a higher...
How far does a sanctuary reach? The Torah told Israel, "I will appoint for you a place" of refuge, but it did not pace out the boundary. The Sages refused to guess. Instead they li...
"If a man acts with intent against his fellow to kill him by cunning" - and from those few words the Sages drew the difference between a killer the court may execute and one it mus...
A Jewish court could not execute a person who stumbled blindly into sin. It first had to be certain he knew exactly what he was doing and chose to do it anyway. The Sages call this...
A murderer has fled to the Temple and grasped the horns of the altar, sacrifice already in his hands, hoping the holiness of the place will save his life. The Torah strips away tha...
Four great Sages were walking a road together when a question caught up with them from behind: where does the Torah teach that saving a human life pushes aside the laws of the Sabb...
