2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 32 of 47.
The Torah singles out the child who lifts a hand against a parent, lifting his case out of the ordinary rules of injury and placing it under the death penalty. The sages press on e...
How can the law against striking a parent stand beside a son who lances his father's boil or lets his blood to heal him? The Talmud, gathered here in the Yalkut, untangles the knot...
Two verses speak of the thief who steals a human being, one in Exodus and one in Deuteronomy, and the sages ask why both are needed. Their answer turns on evidence. One verse cover...
When exactly does a kidnapper cross the line into a capital crime? The sages teach that stealing a person is not enough on its own. The thief must first bring his victim into his o...
The law of kidnapping reaches a wide circle of victims. A man, a woman, a convert, a freed slave, even a minor, all are protected, and stealing any of them is a capital crime. But ...
The verse against cursing a parent opens with a doubled word, "any man, any man," and the sages refuse to let it pass as mere repetition. They read the extra phrase as widening the...
The Torah forbids cursing one's father and mother, but the sages press hard on the wording. One verse speaks only of a man who curses; another phrase is added to teach that a woman...
When two men quarrel and one strikes the other, the Torah opens a whole law of bodily injury. The verse "an eye for an eye" tells us about permanent damage, but it says nothing abo...
The Torah pictures a sudden quarrel: one man strikes another with a stone or with his fist (Exodus 21:18). The sages press into the small word "fist" and ask what it teaches. Shimo...
This terse line is a piece of legal logic dressed as a riddle. Suppose a man shoves another off the top of a high tower and the victim dies. The earlier discussion tried to make th...
The discussion returns to the word "fist" and draws a careful rule from it. A fist is the plainest possible instrument of a blow, something witnesses can see and identify without d...
The Torah says that if an injured man rises and walks abroad upon his staff, the one who struck him is cleared of the death penalty (Exodus 21:19). The sages mine each phrase. "Abr...
A man strikes his fellow, and the court assesses the wound as fatal. Then the victim rallies, only to decline again and finally die. Is the striker still liable for the death? The ...
The verse that clears the striker of death immediately turns to what he still owes. Being free of the death penalty does not free him of his debt to the man he injured. He must pay...
This brief comment lifts a narrow injury law into a broad lesson about how to live. The verse requiring an attacker to pay for lost time and to heal the one he hurt is read not onl...
The Torah requires an attacker to heal the one he wounded, but the sages probe the limits. Suppose the injured man ignores his physician's orders, gorges on honey and sweets that a...
The Torah does not pile up words by accident. When it says a wound in place of a wound, the sages heard more than one ruling folded into a single phrase. Rav Zevid, speaking in the...
The verse "when a man strikes his slave" looks at first like an exception carved out for cruelty. The sages read it the opposite way. A slave is a human being, fully covered by the...
How does a court carry out a death sentence, and why does the manner matter? The sages comb the verse "he shall surely be avenged" to learn that the punishment is execution by the ...
The Torah says that if a struck servant lingers "a day or two" before dying, the master is not put to death. But the verse seems to contradict itself, speaking first of "a day or t...
A servant is sold to a new master with a clause: the seller keeps his service for thirty more days. If the servant is struck and dies during that window, which owner, if either, fa...
Two men come to blows. One swings at his enemy but the blow lands on a friend who tried to step between them. Is the striker guilty of murder? An earlier verse only told us about t...
A man chases another through the streets, knife in hand, meaning to kill. A bystander can stop the pursuer. The law lets him, even at the cost of the pursuer's life. But what if th...
The verse already tells us the woman is expecting, since it says her offspring come out from the blow. So why does it bother to call her "pregnant" at all? Abba Chanan, teaching in...
When a struck pregnant woman loses her child, the Torah orders a payment. But to whom, and measured how? The sages first establish a limit from the word "pregnant": the payment goe...
The Torah's verb is plural, "her offspring come out," which would seem to require at least two. The sages refuse to let a single lost child fall outside the law, and they recover t...
The Torah pictures a quarrel that spills over and strikes a pregnant woman, and it weighs each loss with care. When the verse says the penalty is what the woman's husband shall lay...
A grieving husband might imagine the law puts the price of his loss entirely in his own hands. The verse seems to invite it, saying the penalty is as he shall lay upon him (Exodus ...
A single act can break more than one law at once, and the question the Sages chew on is whether a man can be made to answer twice for one deed. Their answer is firm: for one wicked...
One small word carries enormous weight. When the Torah warns that if harm follow (Exodus 21:23) the penalty changes, the Sages ask what that word means, and they answer plainly: ha...
How far does the rule reach that a man liable with his life pays no money for the same act? Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah pushed it to a daring place. He treated the Day of Atonement e...
Few verses have been twisted by outsiders more than an eye for an eye. The sages refuse to read it as butchery. When one person injures another, they teach, the wrongdoer owes five...
The schools of the Sages return again and again to the same verse and keep arriving at money. The school of Rabbi Ishmael notices that the Torah uses the language of "giving" a ble...
The Torah lists wound for wound, bruise for bruise, and then a burn for a burn, and the Sages will not let a single phrase go to waste. Rabbi Judah and Ben Azzai debate which term ...
The Torah opens a door that the surrounding verses had quietly shut. From the law that a Canaanite slave is held as a lasting possession, a person might assume the master holds tot...
The verse names only two injuries, the eye and the tooth, yet the Sages free a slave for the loss of any visible, permanent limb. How do they get from two examples to a whole princ...
A slave asks his master, who happens to be a physician, for ordinary care. Paint my eye with salve. File down my aching tooth. The treatment goes wrong, the eye is blinded, the too...
A master blinds his slave's eye, then later knocks out a tooth. The first wound has already set the slave free. What of the second? Rabbi Zeira wonders whether both injuries should...
The chapter turns from the slave's freedom to a startling claim about pain. A master who maims his servant loses him, the injury serving as the slave's release. Now the Sages reaso...
When the Torah says an ox "gores," the Sages first pin down what goring actually means. It is an act of the horn, not the hoof or the teeth. They prove it from an odd corner of Scr...
The Torah repeats the word "ox" enough times for the Sages to count seven inclusions, sweeping in oxen owned by a woman, by orphans, by guardians, by the Sanctuary, even by a conve...
Three small words, "the owner of the ox is clear," send the Sages into a debate over exactly what the owner is cleared of. Rabbi Eliezer reads it as exemption from half the ransom ...
The Torah had already drawn a line around bloodshed: whoever strikes a man so that he dies is liable. An ox that gores a person to death falls inside that line. So why does Scriptu...
When does an ox cross from harmless to dangerous in the eyes of the law? The Sages debate exactly how a beast earns the status of muad, the forewarned ox whose owner can no longer ...
A king's servant had killed a man, and the law made no exception for royal households. Shimon ben Shetach, head of the court, sent the king word: your servant has shed blood, send ...
How much care must an owner take before the law lets him off the hook? The verse says liability falls when the owner "did not guard" his ox, and the Sages mine that single clause f...
Rabbi Elazar's ruling that a dangerous animal can only truly be secured by the knife opens onto a broader teaching from Rabbi Natan. The Torah warns, "You shall not bring bloodguil...
When the verse says the ox killed "a man or a woman," Rabbi Akiva asks what new teaching the word "woman" adds, since liability for harming a woman was already stated. His answer i...
