2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 33 of 47.
The verse pairs the fate of the ox with the fate of its owner, "the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death," and the Sages press that pairing hard. If a guardi...
The law of the stoned ox does not stop at oxen. By linking the word "ox" in this passage to the word "ox" used in the Sabbath command, where it stands for every kind of animal, the...
Consider a courtroom where the defendant has four legs. The Sages ruled that an ox condemned to stoning for killing a person is not dispatched by some farmhand on a whim. It is tri...
The law of the goring ox sounds simple until the Sages push it to its edges. Rava raises two odd cases. First, an ox that is itself a tereifah, an animal so injured it cannot survi...
Here is a place where logic alone would lead you astray, and the Torah steps in to correct it. There are two kinds of dangerous animals in this law. The tam is the innocuous ox, on...
What does it mean when the Torah says the owner of a killer ox "shall also be put to death"? Taken at face value, it sounds like the court should execute him. The Sages read it oth...
The ransom that spares a negligent ox-owner opens two hard questions, and the Sages chase both. First, a tempting argument. An ox is not liable for the four categories of compensat...
Rabbi Akiva opens with a hard line of justice. A person already sentenced to death by the court cannot buy his way out. Money has no power once a capital verdict stands, for Script...
The Torah had already declared an owner liable when his dangerous ox killed a man or a woman. But the next verse adds that the same law applies whether the ox gores a son or a daug...
The sages work out how far an owner's liability reaches when his ox gores. The starting question is whether the law treats a child's death like an adult's. Logic alone might have s...
When a dangerous ox kills a free person, the owner pays the victim's assessed worth. A slave was technically covered by that same general law. Yet the Torah pulls the case out and ...
Resh Lakish reads the verse as a tightly linked pair. The owner gives thirty shekels to the slave's master, and the ox is stoned. He insists these two consequences stand or fall to...
An ox gores, a person dies, and the court must now decide what the owner owes. The Torah ties two fates together in a single verse (Exodus 21:29): the ox is stoned, and its owner i...
A clever litigant might try to argue his way out of the law, and the midrash imagines exactly that voice in the courtroom. Suppose someone reasons: the rules already treat an owner...
Rabbi Elazar opens with a puzzle about ownership. There are things a person does not really possess, yet the Torah treats them as if he did. A pit dug in a public road belongs to n...
The verse opens with "if a man," and the rabbis immediately ask the obvious question: only a man? What of a woman who leaves a pit uncovered? The midrash gestures toward a chain of...
A single brief line, but it carries real weight. The midrash returns to the words "if a man opens a pit" and draws out a further meaning hidden in the phrasing. The opener of the p...
The verse names the one who opens an existing pit, but what about the one who digs a fresh pit from the ground? At first glance an owner might try to escape on a technicality, clai...
The midrash sets the opener and the digger side by side and lets each define the other. Whatever exempts the one exempts the other: if a person digs with proper permission he is cl...
How well must a pit be covered? The Torah's word "cover" carries a standard inside it: a covering fit for the danger. A lid strong enough to hold does its job, and the owner is exe...
A man digs a pit in a public road and leaves it open. An ox or a donkey tumbles in and dies. Who answers for the loss? The Torah is blunt: the one who opened the pit pays, every ti...
How deep must a pit be before the Torah calls it deadly? The Sages fixed the line at ten handbreadths. At that depth a fall can kill, and the digger answers for a death. At nine, t...
What exactly does a pit kill with? Rav and Samuel split over the question. Rav says the Torah charges the digger for the pit's foul, deadly air, not for the blow of hitting bottom,...
When does digging a pit make you a debtor in the eyes of the Torah, and when does it not? Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva trade readings of the verses, parsing "opens" and "digs" and...
The Torah says an ox "gores," but a beast can harm in more ways than one. The Sages refuse to let the word stay narrow. Rabbi Josiah reads it to cover goring, shoving, lying down o...
When one ox kills another, how do you split the loss when the two beasts were not worth the same? The Torah says they "sell the live ox" and "divide the dead." From this single ver...
The Torah writes that the goring ox harmed "his neighbor's" ox. That small possessive becomes a hinge. The plain teaching is that consecrated property, an ox belonging to the sanct...
When an ox not known to be dangerous kills another, its owner pays half the damage. But what kind of payment is that half? Rav Papa and Rav Huna son of Rav Yehoshua split over a de...
Two oxen, each worth two hundred. One gores the other to death, and now the carcass is worth a mere three zuz. How does the Torah split the loss? Rabbi Yehudah reads the verse plai...
An ox can damage in different ways, and the Torah does not treat them alike. When an animal eats or tramples, that is its ordinary nature, called tooth and foot; when it gores out ...
When an ox dies from another's goring, who is left holding the carcass? It would be easy to assume the owner of the goring ox keeps it as part of what he pays out. The Torah rules ...
A man steals an ox or a sheep, then slaughters or sells it. The Torah loads him with a steep penalty, fourfold for the sheep and fivefold for the ox, far beyond the simple repaymen...
Having taught that both the thief who slaughters and the thief who sells owe the heavy fine, the Torah sets the two acts side by side and lets each define the other. The Sages draw...
The thief of an ox pays five times its value; the thief of a sheep pays only four. Why the gap? Two of the greatest sages give answers that turn a dry fine into a window onto God's...
The heavy fine for a slaughtered or sold stolen animal applies to oxen and sheep alone, and the Sages prove it from the doubled mention of "ox or sheep," closing the door on wild b...
A thief tunnels into a home at night. The Torah grants the householder the right to strike him down. Why? Because the burglar who breaks in by night has, in effect, accepted that t...
The Torah lets a homeowner kill a burglar who tunnels in at night, when the intruder is presumed ready to kill anyone who resists. But Rabbi Ishmael refuses to read the verse about...
How far does a person reach? The verse says a stolen object found "in his hand" makes the thief liable, and another verse says a divorce takes effect when placed "in her hand." The...
The robber and the thief both take what is not theirs, yet the Torah fines the thief double while the open robber pays only what he seized. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's students co...
How many ways are there to be a thief? The sages count seven, and the worst is not the one who lifts your purse. The first and foremost thief is the one who steals the mind, the tr...
Why would the Torah bother to write a law about an animal grazing through a neighbor's field, when common sense already seems to cover it? The sages raise exactly that objection. A...
The Torah holds an owner liable when his animal strays into a neighbor's land and feeds or tramples there. The sages first separate the harms. Tooth and foot are two distinct liabi...
One short verse about an animal that "sends" itself out and "grazes" is unpacked by the sages into the two great categories of livestock damage. The word for sending points to the ...
When an animal eats up a neighbor's crop, how is the loss repaid? The verse says the owner pays from "the best of his field and the best of his vineyard," and the sages split over ...
Abaye pressed Rava on a tension in the law. The Torah commands that one who damages a neighbor's property pays from "the best of his field and the best of his vineyard" (Exodus 22:...
The Torah opens the law of fire with "when a fire goes out and finds thorns" (Exodus 22:5). The Sages refused to let those thorns be mere scenery. They are a measuring rod: where t...
When an animal wanders into a neighbor's field and grazes in its ordinary way, the owner pays for what it ate. But how do you put a price on a patch of nibbled crops? The Sages ref...
The Torah frames the law of a paid guardian with a deliberate rhythm: a man hands his fellow "money or vessels," and it is stolen "from the man's house" (Exodus 22:6). The Sages re...
