12,014 related texts · Page 51 of 251
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) noticed the same numerical tension between two biblical verses about the duration of Israel's time in Egypt. One says "they shall serve them and they s...
Rabbi Yitzchak posed a sharp question about what appeared to be a redundant verse. The Torah states that a toshav (resident alien) and a sachir (hired worker) may not eat of the Pa...
(Exodus 13:17) "And it was, when G–d sent ("shalach") the people": "sending" in all places is accompaniment, viz. (Genesis 18:16) "And Abraham went with them to send them," (Ibid. ...
Variantly: "for it was near": The Holy One Blessed be He did not bring them directly to Eretz Yisrael but by way of the desert, saying: If I bring them there now, immediately each ...
R. Nehorai says: I swear: Not one in five hundred went up. For it is written (Ezekiel 16:7) "(In Egypt) I made you as numerous as the plants of the field," and (Exodus 1:7) "And th...
(Exodus 13:19) "And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him": This apprises us of the wisdom and saintliness of Moses. All of Israel were occupying themselves with the spoils (of E...
And thus did the Holy One Blessed be He impress upon the nations of the world His love of Israel—He Himself walking before them, so that they (learn to) treat them honorably. And l...
When Israel stood at the edge of the Red Sea and saw the water raging before them, their first instinct was to flee into the desert. But God had sealed that escape route too. The M...
"and the children of Israel went out with a high hand": Scripture hereby apprises us that when the Egyptians were pursuing Israel, they vilified and execrated and cursed, while Isr...
Rabbi Bana'ah taught that God split the Red Sea for the Israelites in the merit of their ancestor Abraham. The proof lies in a striking verbal parallel between two verses. When Abr...
When the Israelites stood trapped between the sea ahead and Pharaoh's army behind, a single verse describes the moment the divine rescue began (Exodus 14:19): "And the angel of God...
Pappus expounded (Song of Songs 1:9) "to a mare in the chariots of Pharaoh, etc.": Pharaoh rode on a stallion—the Holy One Blessed be He revealed Himself, as it were, on a stallion...
The Torah states that Israel saw the Egyptians "dead on the shore of the sea" (Exodus 14:30). The Mekhilta asks a blunt question: were they actually dead? The answer is more distur...
The Mekhilta interprets the phrase "For He is high on high" (Exodus 15:1) as describing a relationship of mutual exaltation between God and Israel. The doubling in the Hebrew — ga'...
The Mekhilta offers a variant reading of "He is high on high" (Exodus 15:1) that relocates the mutual exaltation from Egypt to the Red Sea itself. In this version, the back-and-for...
And thus do you find with the men of Sodom, that with what they vaunted themselves before Him, He exacted punishment of them. As it is written (Iyyov 28:5-8) "A land from which bre...
And all who help Israel, help, as it were, the Holy One Blessed be He, viz. (Judges 5:23) "Curse Meroz, said the angel of the L–rd. Curse bitterly its dwellers. For they came not t...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael draws a line from the Red Sea to another famous battlefield to demonstrate that God fights Israel's wars from heaven. The case in point: Sisera, the f...
The Mekhilta draws a remarkable distinction between what the Red Sea was for Egypt and what it was for Israel. For the Egyptians, the sea was a sealed tomb. For the Israelites, it ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael connects the drowning of the Egyptians at the Red Sea to the apocalyptic prophecy of Ezekiel about the war of Gog and Magog. The link between these tw...
The Mekhilta pinpoints the exact moment when Israel first declared (Exodus 15:11): "Who is like You among the mighty, O Lord?" It was not during the plagues. It was not at the mome...
Israel was not the only nation that broke into song at the Red Sea. According to the Mekhilta, all the peoples of the world joined in. The destruction of Pharaoh and his army sent ...
The Mekhilta offers a variant tradition that shifts the scene from the Red Sea to the Jordan River. When Israel crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, all the kings of Canaan b...
When the Israelites arrived at Eilim after their grueling desert journey, they found an oasis that defied all natural proportion. Twelve springs of water bubbled up from the earth,...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a sweeping conclusion from the verse "and you will know that the L-rd took you out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 16:6). The teaching here is not...
In (Exodus 16:9), Moses instructed Aaron to tell the entire congregation of Israel to "draw near before the Lord." Two rabbis in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael disagreed about what ...
(Exodus 16:13) says simply that "in the morning there was a layer of dew." But the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael saw in this plain statement a description of one of the most elaborate ...
Issi ben Yehudah taught a remarkable detail about the manna that fell in the wilderness: when it descended for Israel, it was visible to all the nations of the earth. The peoples o...
When the manna first appeared in the wilderness, the Israelites had never seen anything like it. (Exodus 16:15) records their reaction: "And the children of Israel saw it, and each...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael offered a remarkable tradition about Joshua the son of Nun and his unique relationship with the manna. (Psalms 78:25) says "He sent them sustenance to...
The Mekhilta completes its trilogy of faith-based miracles with the blood of the Passover lamb. God told the Israelites to slaughter a lamb and place its blood on their doorposts, ...
The verse says Moses' hands were "steadfast" during the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17:12). The Mekhilta reads that single word as a double testimony — each of Moses' two hands t...
R. Eliezer says: Yithro heard the splitting of the sea and came (to join Israel). For the splitting of the sea was heard from one end of the world to the other, viz. (Joshua 5:1) "...
The Mekhilta teaches that there are people in the Torah whose very names were diminished — literally shrunk — because of their actions. The prime example is Efron the Hittite, the ...
R. Yossi says: G–d forbid that tzaddik (a righteous person)im (the righteous) should be lax in circumcision for even a short while, but Moses expounded: Shall he circumcise (his so...
R. Yitzchak took the lesson about serving others and elevated it to cosmic proportions. If we want to find someone greater than both R. Gamliel and Abraham in the act of serving, h...
Throughout the book of Exodus, whenever the Israelites traveled, the Torah uses the plural form — "they journeyed," "they encamped" — because the people moved in discord and settle...
Rabbi Eliezer offers a breathtaking interpretation of (Song of Songs 2:14), reading each phrase as a reference to the events at the Red Sea. The verse reads: "Show me your face, le...
After being rejected by the sons of Esau, God turned to the sons of Ammon and Moab and made the same offer: "Will you accept the Torah?" The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael records their...
Beloved is Israel — so beloved that God gave entire nations as kofer, as ransom, for the souls of His people. The proof is (Isaiah 43:3): "I gave Egypt as kofer for you, Ethiopia a...
The Torah says the ox gored "a man-servant or a maid-servant." The Mekhilta asks: which kind of servant? This must refer to a Canaanite bondservant, not an Israelite one. The proof...
Beloved are the converts, and the Mekhilta offers a stunning proof: God delayed Abraham's circumcision until the age of ninety-nine specifically to keep the door open for future co...
The Torah commands: "And the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath for their generations" (Exodus 31:16). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael connects this ve...
We often picture God as all-powerful, creating worlds and intervening in human affairs. But did you know there's a tradition that imagines God as… a Torah scholar? It’s true! The B...
Jewish tradition dares to imagine a God who weeps. And perhaps nowhere is that more powerfully depicted than in the legends surrounding the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. ...
We're talking about a figure so powerful that, according to some, it was this angel who brought everything into existence. Think of it: this angel created not just the physical wor...
Jewish tradition has some fascinating – and sobering – ideas about that transition. It's a moment watched over, judged, and ultimately, a reckoning. Imagine this: As a person breat...
It was a spectacle. The Targum Neophyti on (Exodus 20:1) describes it as shooting stars, lightning, and fiery torches all rolled into one. Can you picture that? A blazing, celestia...
