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The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael raises a question about who is obligated to honor parents. The commandment says "Honor your father and your mother," but a related verse in (Leviticus...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betheira offered an alternative proof that the commandment to honor parents applies equally to all people regardless of sex. His argument in the Mekhilta DeRabbi ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael invites the reader to examine the rewards promised for three different commandments and to see a striking pattern. Each act of honor directed at the p...
The fifth commandment, "Honor your father and your mother," comes with a promise attached: "so that your days be prolonged upon the land." The Mekhilta reads this promise with unfl...
The Torah commands: "You shall not steal." But the Mekhilta asks a question that might surprise anyone who thinks the meaning is obvious — does this commandment prohibit stealing m...
The ninth commandment — "You shall not testify against your neighbor false testimony" — is more than a prohibition. It is the foundation of an entire legal system built on the reli...
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...
When Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the Torah records that "Moses entered into the mist, where God was" (Exodus 20:21). The Mekhilta reveals that this approach to...
At Sinai, God made a statement to Israel that no other nation in history could claim: "You saw that from the heavens I spoke to you." The Mekhilta pauses on this verse to draw out ...
Rabbi Nathan drew a sharp line between what Israel experienced at Sinai and what the rest of the world perceived. The nations heard about the revelation. Israel saw it. That differ...
Rabbi Nathan interpreted the prohibition against idolatry in (Exodus 20:20) — "You shall not make alongside Me" — with striking directness. God is saying: do not think you can make...
Rabbi Yonathan made a declaration that would strike most people as counterintuitive: "Beloved are afflictions." Suffering, he taught, is not a sign of divine abandonment. It is a s...
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...
If the prohibition against "gods of gold" addresses making extra cherubs beyond the commanded two, what does the additional prohibition against "gods of silver" teach? After all, t...
Issi ben Akiva proposed a striking interpretation of the altar's construction: it was a copper altar filled with earth. This sounds like a simple engineering detail, but the Mekhil...
Rabbi Assi advanced a surprising claim: the slaughtering of sacrificial animals also took place on top of the altar, not merely beside it. This contradicted the common understandin...
R. Yossi b. R. Yehudah says: From half the altar northwards is regarded as north, and from half the altar southwards is regarded as south. And this tells me only that the north of ...
"And you shall slaughter therein your burnt-offerings and your peace-offerings." This tells me only of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Whence do I derive (the same for) all of...
The Torah prohibits approaching the altar by steps: "And you shall not go up with steps to My altar, so that your nakedness not be revealed upon it" (Exodus 20:23). From this verse...
Rabbi Akiva found a powerful protection for servants hidden in a verse that most readers would pass over quickly. The Torah says in (Exodus 21:3): "If alone he came, alone shall he...
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...
Can it not be deduced a fortiori? viz.: If a Hebrew maidservant, who goes out with (the appearance of pubertal) signs, does not go out with (loss of) organ prominences, then a Hebr...
(Exodus 21:3) states: "If he were the husband of a woman, his wife shall go out with him." The Mekhilta asks: what kind of woman is this verse talking about? It must be a Jewish wo...
The Torah states regarding a Hebrew servant: "then his wife shall go out with him." Rabbi Yitzchak read this verse and asked a brilliantly simple question that exposed a deeper leg...
Whence do we derive (the same for) the food of his children? From (Leviticus 25:41) "And he shall go out from you (in the Jubilee year), he and his children with him." From "going ...
The Torah states that if a master gives his Hebrew bondsman a Canaanite bondswoman "and she bears him sons or daughters," the woman and her children belong to the master (Exodus 21...
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...
Rabbi Yitzchak examined a verse concerning the laws of Hebrew servants and declared that the verse, strictly speaking, was not necessary. The legal principle it teaches could alrea...
The Torah describes a remarkable scenario in the laws of servitude: a Hebrew servant whose term of service has ended, yet who declares, "I love my master" and chooses to remain. Th...
The Torah prescribes a vivid ritual for a Hebrew servant who refuses to go free after six years of service: "Then his master shall bore his ear" with an awl against a doorpost (Exo...
Where exactly on the ear is the bondsman pierced? The Mekhilta records a dispute between two authorities. Rabbi Yehudah said the piercing goes through the lobe — the soft, fleshy p...
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 ...
The Mekhilta continues its rigorous legal analysis of who can be sold into servitude. Having established that a daughter cannot sell herself, a new question arises. Should a daught...
"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)...
R. Yonathan says: "she'erah" is her clothing, i.e., clothing that is adapted to her flesh ("she'er"). If she were young, he should not give her (the clothing) of an elderly woman. ...
The Torah instructs that if a master takes an additional wife, "he shall not diminish" what he owes to the first wife (Exodus 21:10). Rabbi Yoshiyah raises an important question ab...
Rabbi Yonathan disagrees with Rabbi Yoshiyah's reading of "he shall not diminish" (Exodus 21:10). Where Rabbi Yoshiyah understood the verse as protecting the Hebrew maid-servant (t...
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 Torah says the Hebrew maid-servant "shall go out free" if her master fails to fulfill his obligations (Exodus 21:11). The Mekhilta probes the meaning of the word "free" with a ...
"then she shall go out free": when she is a bogereth (i.e., after twelve and a half years); "without money": when she is a na'arah (from twelve and a day until twelve and half.) No...
The Torah describes a young woman sold into servitude by her father and establishes the conditions under which she goes free. Rabbi Eliezer interprets the verse "Then she shall go ...
The Torah declares that a person who strikes and kills another "shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:12). The Mekhilta immediately qualifies this statement with a critical procedural ...
The Torah states plainly: "He shall be put to death." But where? Under whose authority? Left unqualified, these words might mean that anyone could carry out the execution — a mob, ...
The Mekhilta presents a series of vivid scenarios involving accidental death, each illustrating the same legal principle. A man pulls a heavy roller up to a rooftop, and it slips f...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael cites a verse from (I Samuel 24:19) that contains one of the most intriguing phrases in all of Scripture: "As stated in the apothegm of the Primal One...
The Torah describes the premeditated murderer as one who kills "with subtlety" in (Exodus 21:14). The Mekhilta seizes on this word — "subtlety" — and uses it to carve out a series ...
"And if one strikes his father or his mother": a blow which causes a wound. You say a blow which causes a wound, but perhaps even a blow which does not cause a wound? Would you say...
