12,014 related texts · Page 180 of 251
When God offered the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the entire nation responded with one of the most remarkable declarations in all of Scripture. As the Mekhilta explains,...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a legal ruling from God's command to the Israelites before the revelation at Sinai: "Do not draw near to a woman" (Exodus 19:15). Moses delivere...
"And it was, on the third day, when it was morning" (Exodus 19:16) — the day the Torah would be given at Sinai. The Mekhilta draws a remarkable inference from this verse: God "aros...
When God descended upon Mount Sinai to give the Torah, the mountain erupted with phenomena that defied nature. The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael pauses on the word "lightnings" in (Exo...
"And its smoke rose like the smoke of a lime kiln" (Exodus 19:18) — this is how the Torah describes Mount Sinai when God descended upon it. But the Mekhilta immediately senses a pr...
"saying": They responded to an affirmative (i.e., "You shall, etc.") in the affirmative ("Yes") and to a negative, in the negative. R. Akiva says: to an affirmative in the affirmat...
Rabbi Nathan presents this teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael as a direct rebuttal to heretics who claim there are two divine powers. The argument is elegant in its simpli...
The Mekhilta offers a parable that illuminates the logic behind the order of events at Sinai. A king of flesh and blood enters a new province. His servants immediately urge him: "M...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael identifies a crucial legal distinction hidden in the commandment "There shall not be unto you other gods." The question is deceptively simple: what ex...
Rabbi Eliezer offered a mordantly funny interpretation of the phrase "elohim acherim" (other gods) in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael. He connected "acherim" not to "otherness" but t...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael records a teaching from Rabbi Akiva about just how far the prohibition against making images extends. The verse in (Exodus 20:18) states "which is in ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael asks a deceptively simple question: what is the purpose of the commandment "You shall not bow down"? If the Torah already states in (Exodus 22:19) tha...
A certain philosopher asked R. Gamliel: It is written in your Torah "for the L–rd your G–d is a wrathful G–d." Now is there power in idolatry to arouse wrath (in G–d)? One here is ...
Rebbi says: Beloved is the honoring of parents by Him who spoke and brought the world into being, His having equated their honor and fear to His honor, and their curse (i.e., their...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael poses a deceptively simple question: how were the Ten Commandments arranged on the two tablets? The answer reveals a hidden moral architecture within ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael uses a vivid parable to explain why murder is equated with diminishing the divine image. The teaching compares God to a king of flesh and blood who en...
The sages offered an alternative view of how the Ten Commandments were arranged on the two tablets. While Rabbi Chanina ben Gamliel taught that five commandments appeared on each t...
(Exodus 20:15) describes an extraordinary moment at Sinai: "And all the people saw the sounds and the lightnings." The people did not merely hear the divine voice — they saw it. Ra...
The Israelites stood at the edge of the sea, the Egyptian army bearing down behind them, and terror gripped the camp. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, freshly lib...
Two biblical verses about Sinai appear to contradict each other directly. (Exodus 20:19) says God spoke "from the heavens." But (Exodus 19:20) says "the Lord went down upon Mount S...
Rabbi Yishmael read the commandment against idolatry with a scope that went far beyond golden calves and carved statues. When the Torah says "You shall not make unto Me gods of sil...
R. Akiva says: "You shall not do (i.e., deport yourselves) with Me" as others do with their gods. When good befalls them, they honor their gods, viz. (Habakkuk 1:16) "Therefore, he...
The book of Job presents one of the most profound tests of faith in all of Scripture. Job loses everything — his wealth, his children, his health — and his wife urges him to curse ...
The Mekhilta makes a claim that strikes against every human instinct: a person should rejoice in suffering more than in prosperity. The reasoning is startling in its logic. Even if...
Rabbi Nechemiah made a bold claim: afflictions are beloved by God. Not merely tolerated, not merely permitted — beloved. And he backed this claim with a comparison to sacrificial o...
The Torah states, "Wherever I shall mention My name, I will come to you and bless you" (Exodus 20:21). The Mekhilta interprets this verse with a startling specificity: "where I am ...
Rabbi Yishmael noticed something crucial in the opening words of the Torah's civil law code (Exodus 21:1): "And these are the judgments." The key word is "and"—in Hebrew, the conju...
Why do the laws of adjudication — civil justice — take precedence over all the other commandments in the Torah? Rabbi Shimon gave a deceptively simple answer: because adjudication ...
For it is written (Ibid. 7) "And if a man sells his daughter as a maidservant, she shall not go out as the (Canaanite) bondsmen go out"—by (loss of) organ prominences, as the Canaa...
The Torah specifies that a Hebrew maidservant does not go free through the loss of "organ prominences" — external body parts like teeth or eyes that, if knocked out by the master, ...
The Torah addresses the case of a Hebrew servant whose master gives him a wife during his term of service. In (Exodus 21:4), the verse begins with the word "If" — "If his master gi...
"the woman and her children": What is the intent of this? That her children are (slaves) as she is. This tells me only of a bondswoman, that her children are as she is. Whence do I...
The phrase "and he shall go out alone" in (Exodus 21:4) seems redundant. If the bondsman's term is up, of course he goes out. Why add "alone"? The Mekhilta finds hidden legal conte...
Rebbi, the great Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, offered a precise definition of a word that usually sounds limitless. When the Torah says a Hebrew servant "shall serve him forever" (Exodus ...
"And if a man sells": We are hereby apprised that he may sell her (as a maid-servant). And whence is it derived that he is permitted to betroth her?—If he can remove her from (the ...
(Ibid.) "she shall not go out as the bondsmen go out": i.e., she shall not go out as the Canaanites go out. You say (that the intent is) she shall not go out by (the mutilation of)...
The Torah states that a master who takes a Hebrew maid-servant as his wife must provide for her "according to the ordinance of the daughters" (Exodus 21:9). The Mekhilta asks what ...
The Torah lists three things a husband must provide for his wife: "she'eirah, kesuthah, and onathah" (Exodus 21:10). These three Hebrew terms are cryptic, and the Mekhilta preserve...
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) offers a dramatically different reading of the three marital obligations listed in (Exodus 21:10). Where Rabbi Yoshiyah identified "she'eirah" as food ...
The Torah states: "And if these three he does not do to her, then she shall go out free, without money" (Exodus 21:11). The Mekhilta asks the obvious question: what are "these thre...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves a legal teaching from Rabbi Nathan that resolves an apparent contradiction in the Torah's laws about monetary obligations. On the one hand, ...
The Mekhilta examines one of the most consequential legal distinctions in the Torah: the difference between intentional killing and accidental death. The text lays out three vivid ...
One of the disciples of R. Yishmael said: It is written (Exodus 35:3) "You shall not light a fire in all of your dwellings on the Sabbath day." Burning was in the category (of all ...
The Torah contains a dramatic command about a murderer who has taken refuge at the altar: "From My very altar shall you take him to die" (Exodus 21:14). Even the holiest place in t...
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) drew a profound parallel between divine punishment and human punishment. "There is 'death' at the hands of Heaven and 'death' at the hands of man," he ...
The Mekhilta records the precise procedure for carrying out the judicial penalty of strangulation — one of the four methods of capital punishment prescribed by Torah law. Far from ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael presents a classic a fortiori argument, known in rabbinic logic as kal va-chomer, "from the light to the heavy." This particular kal va-chomer address...
The Torah states: "And one who steals a man... shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:16). The crime of kidnapping carries the death penalty. But the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael im...
