2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 42 of 47.
Where on the animal does ritual slaughter happen? The Torah never says it outright, yet Rabbi Hiyya draws the answer from a seemingly redundant phrase. The verse lists "the head an...
Fire came down from heaven onto the altar, a wonder that never ceased: the flame kindled in Moses' day clung to the bronze altar until the Temple was built, and the flame of Solomo...
When the cut pieces of the lamb are carried up to the altar fire, how many priests share the work? The verse seems to leave it open, so the Sages narrow it down through the grammar...
A single verse, "And they shall arrange wood upon the fire," turns out to carry three distinct teachings, and the Sages mine each one. First, the afternoon daily offering. Rabbi Sh...
The Torah commands that the limbs of the burnt offering be set "upon the wood" of the altar fire. But Scripture is sparing with its words, and the sages refused to let a single pre...
When a person brings a freewill burnt offering, who supplies the firewood? It would seem natural that the donor bring his own logs and his own flame, the way he brings the animal. ...
A man wants to bring a burnt offering. Should he supply his own wood, as he supplies the wine? No, the sages ruled: the wood, like the altar, belongs to the public stores. And it m...
How much water does it take to rinse the inwards of an offering? Elsewhere in the Torah, ritual washing demands a full ritual bath, forty se'ah. Here the sages read the bare word "...
"The whole" of the burnt offering goes up in fire, and the sages read that word generously to include the bones, the sinews, the horns, and even the hooves. Yet another verse speak...
The sinew of the thigh, the gid hanasheh, is forbidden to Israelites at the dinner table ever since Jacob's struggle at the river. But what happens when that same sinew sits inside...
A single phrase, "a pleasing aroma to the LORD," carries the whole inner discipline of sacrifice. Rav Yehudah unpacked six intentions hidden in those few words. The animal must be ...
Why does the Torah break its instructions on sacrifice into separate paragraphs, when it could have run them together? The midrash gives a quietly profound answer. The pauses were ...
The Torah names the burnt offering plainly: from the flock, from the sheep, or from the goats. The Sages hear in those words a careful fence. Not every animal may climb the altar. ...
A single line of the Torah, sheep or goats for a burnt offering, becomes a courtroom where three great teachers argue what those words quietly admit and what they shut out. First t...
One small word in the verse, it, does the work of three fences, and the Sages walk each one in turn. And he shall slaughter it on the side of the altar northward. The word it press...
Two fathers and two sons of the study hall trade riddles here, and the joy of the passage is watching a teacher get answered, told you have erred, and pressed again. Samuel's own f...
A single phrase about where the animal is slaughtered, by the flank of the altar northward, lets the Sages map the geometry of the Temple court. If the animal's flank lies to the n...
A teaching from elsewhere supplies the numbers: the ramp on the south side of the altar ran thirty-two cubits long and sixteen wide. But the Sages want to know where the law itself...
How much of the courtyard counts as the north where the holiest offerings may be slaughtered? The Sages disagree, and their disagreement quietly paces out the whole floor of the Te...
The verse turns to the work of the priest's hands, and the Sages weigh every motion. He shall cut it into its pieces, but only a fit animal, and the pieces themselves are not chopp...
When the Torah names the creatures that may rise upon the altar as a burnt-offering of birds, it chooses the turtledove and the young pigeon. Rabbi Abbahu draws a lesson from the c...
Rav Sheshet opens with a sharp ruling about a slave whose blind eye is gouged out by his master: because a limb is now missing, the slave goes free. The same principle of a missing...
The Torah names turtledoves and young pigeons as the offering, and the sages press the wording to its limit. The bird itself must be of these species, but the implements that ready...
After the bird's blood is drained, the priest removes its crop, the pouch where its food collects. The Torah adds the words "with its feathers," and the sages debate the gesture. O...
This compact passage settles a question about the ashes swept from two sacred objects: the inner golden altar of incense and the lamp-stand. The ruling is that once these ashes are...
Why does the Torah single out the bird's crop for removal, when an animal is offered whole? Rabbi Tanhum bar Hanilai answers with a moral picture. The bird flies across the whole w...
The Torah says the priest tears the bird by its wings but does not divide it, leaving even the unpleasant smell of burning feathers upon the altar. Rabbi Yochanan asks why God woul...
The bird burnt-offering is torn open by its wings but not split in two, and the sages mine each word of the verse. The tearing belongs to the bird alone; an animal offering is neve...
Rabbi Isaac noticed a strange word in the verse about the meal offering. For every other sacrifice the Torah names the donor plainly, but here it says "when a soul brings near a me...
Two ingredients crown the meal offering, oil and frankincense, but the Torah treats them differently. The oil is poured over the whole offering, while the frankincense is set on on...
The Mishnah traces the whole journey of a meal offering, from a family's kitchen to the flames of the altar. A worshipper carries his gift from home in baskets of silver and gold, ...
Where exactly may a priest take the handful from a meal offering? Rabbi Elazar ruled that even if he scoops it inside the sanctuary hall itself, the offering is valid. He pointed t...
A meal offering passes through many small rites, the oil poured, the flour blended, the dough broken, the salting, the waving. What happens if the priest skips one of them? The Mis...
The phrase "the sons of Aaron" is read with precision. The sons, the sages note, and not the daughters: the taking of the handful is a priestly duty reserved to the men of Aaron's ...
What does a "full handful" actually mean? The sages refused two extremes. It is not flour heaped up high above the hand, and it is not a meager pinch caught on the fingertips. A fu...
For the meal offerings baked in a pan, the priest smooths away the overflow, pressing with his thumb across the top and his little finger beneath, until the measure in his curled h...
In the Temple court the meal-offering looked humble: a measure of fine flour, a pour of oil, a fistful lifted toward the fire, frankincense set on top. Yet the Sages read the Torah...
The priest reached into the bowl of fine flour mixed with oil and closed his fist around a single handful. The Torah calls this the "memorial-portion," and the Sages weighed every ...
A person could stand in the courtyard and say, "I take upon myself an oven-baked meal-offering." Simple enough, until the Sages asked what "oven-baked" actually permitted, because ...
Two breads, two ways of meeting the oil. The Torah says the loaves are "blended" and the wafers "anointed," and the Sages would not let those two verbs blur into one. Blending mean...
The verse describing the meal-offering says "with oil" twice, and to the Sages no repetition in the Torah is idle. From that doubled phrase they ruled that the second pouring of oi...
The Torah names two vessels for the meal-offering: a deep pan, the marcheshet, whose batter seethes and stirs, and a shallow pan, the machavat, whose dough lies flat and firm. The ...
After it was baked, the meal-offering was not burned whole. The priest broke it apart, and the Sages worked out from the verse exactly which offerings this applied to and how far t...
The Torah lists three vessels for the meal-offering, and the Sages compared the last two. What sets the covered deep pan apart from the open griddle? Rabbi Yose the Galilean pointe...
The Temple kitchen turned out two kinds of meal offering. Some were eaten by the priests after a handful was burned on the altar, and some were burned whole, leaving no remnant for...
The argument moves like a single line folding back on itself. It opens with a firstborn animal that has fallen sick with congested blood. May a healer drain that blood, even at the...
The natural assumption is that the rules about leaven attach only to offerings baked as flat unleavened bread, since those are the ones leaven could spoil. The midrash overturns th...
Firstfruits are not just any produce a farmer happens to harvest first. The law confines them to the seven species for which the Land of Israel is praised, and even within those it...
