Rabbi Yossi HaGlili confronts the timing question head-on: when exactly must a person eliminate chametz from their home before Passover? His answer hinges on a single Hebrew word that divides the day in two.
The Torah says, "You shall eliminate leaven from your house." Rabbi Yossi HaGlili reads this as referring to the day before the festival — not the festival day itself. But someone might object: perhaps the Torah means to eliminate chametz on the festival day?
Here Rabbi Yossi HaGlili points to the word akh — "only" — which appears in the phrase "No labor shall be done in them, akh." In rabbinic hermeneutics, the word akh always signals a limitation or division. It splits something that seems whole into parts.
Applied to this verse, akh divides the fourteenth day of Nisan into two halves. During the first half — up through the sixth hour of the day — chametz is still permitted. One may still own it, eat it, and benefit from it. But once the sixth hour passes, chametz becomes forbidden. From that moment forward, any chametz remaining must be destroyed.
The elegance of this reading is that a single word does the work of an entire legal framework. Akh establishes a deadline, creates a grace period, and defines the transition from permitted to forbidden — all without any additional verses or complex derivations. This is the Mekhilta at its most precise.