4,128 texts · Page 44 of 86
The opening words of the Song of the Sea — "I shall sing to the Lord" (Exodus 15:1) — prompt the Mekhilta to reflect on what makes God worthy of song. The phrase that follows in th...
A king of flesh and blood enters a province, and all praise him as "strong"—when he is weak; as "rich"—when he is poor; as "wise"—when he is foolish; as "merciful"—when he is cruel...
The Mekhilta adds another dimension to the Song of the Sea: "I shall sing to the Lord," who is wise. Not merely knowledgeable or clever — wise in the absolute sense. All wisdom tha...
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...
Variantly: "for high on high": He exalts Himself over the exalted. With what the nations of the world exalt themselves before Him, He exacts punishment of them. In the generation o...
The generation of the Flood was destroyed by the very thing they worshipped. The Mekhilta draws a chilling connection between their sin and their punishment through a play on Hebre...
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 bread h...
The Mekhilta draws attention to a strange detail about the drowning of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. When God cast "a horse and its rider" into the sea, something happened that...
The Mekhilta notices a subtle but important contradiction in the Song of the Sea and resolves it with a vivid image of what actually happened to the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Se...
The Mekhilta preserves a beautiful declaration attributed to King David, addressed directly to God: "You are a trust, a help, and a support to all who enter the world — but to me m...
The Mekhilta presents a beautiful declaration in which Israel — personified as a bride — proclaims her lineage before God with joyful pride: "I am a queen, the daughter of kings; a...
The Torah declares, "The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name" (Exodus 15:3). This verse, from the Song of the Sea, prompted the Mekhilta to address a potential misunderstand...
The Mekhilta offers a vivid parable to distinguish God's warrior nature from every human warrior. Consider, it says, a warrior in a province who is fully equipped with every weapon...
The Mekhilta presents another parable contrasting human warriors with God, this time focusing on the problem of aging. A human warrior reaches the height of his power at forty year...
The Mekhilta offers a pointed reading of the phrase "The chariots of Pharaoh" from the Song of the Sea, connecting Pharaoh's destruction at the Red Sea directly to his earlier crim...
The Mekhilta draws a precise set of parallels between the Egyptian oppression of Israel and the punishment that God inflicted at the Red Sea, showing that every detail of the destr...
The Mekhilta continues its detailed mapping of the Egyptian punishments at the Red Sea, this time connecting the drowning to the specific suffering of slave labor. The Egyptians ha...
The Song of the Sea declares: "The depths covered them" (Exodus 15:5). The Mekhilta asks an obvious but brilliant question: are there really depths at the bottom of the sea? The Is...
The Mekhilta draws a striking comparison between the experience of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the great fish and the fate of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea — and the Egypt...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael states a foundational principle of divine justice: "As one metes it out, so is it meted out to him." God's punishments are not random. They mirror the...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws attention to a single word in the Song at the Sea that transforms the entire verse from a description of the past into a prophecy of the future....
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael interprets one of the most powerful lines in the Song at the Sea: "And in the greatness of Your grandeur You break those who rise up against You" (Exo...
R. Yehudah says: It is not written "the pupil of the eye, but "the pupil of His eye"—the "eye" of the Holy One, as it were. Similarly, (Malachi 1:13) "And you say (of an offering) ...
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...
Belshazzar, king of Babylon, threw the banquet that ended his dynasty. The Mekhilta cites (Daniel 5:1) — "King Belshazzar made a great banquet" — and reads it as the culmination of...
The Mekhilta continues its grammatical investigation of the Song at the Sea and finds yet another future-tense verb. (Exodus 15:7) does not say "He has consumed them as stubble" — ...
The Mekhilta reads (Exodus 15:8) — "And with the breath of Your nostrils, the waters ne'ermu" — as another demonstration of God's measure-for-measure justice. The Hebrew word "ne'e...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael offers a vivid image of what happened to the Egyptians at the bottom of the Red Sea. The Torah says "the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea...
The Mekhilta preserves a disturbing alternative reading of Pharaoh's boast. "Others say: It is not written 'I will draw my sword,' but 'I will empty my sword.'" The shift from "dra...
The Song at the Sea declares, "Who is like You, nedar in holiness" (Exodus 15:11), and the Mekhilta finds a hidden layer of meaning compressed inside a single Hebrew word. The word...
The measure of flesh and blood—When one man works for another—plowing with him, sowing with him, weeding with him, hoeing with him—the other gives him a single coin and he goes on ...
The Mekhilta draws a stark contrast between the creative power of God and the limitations of human beings. The measure of flesh and blood — meaning any mortal craftsman — cannot ev...
The Mekhilta presents a second comparison between human artisans and the divine Creator — this time focusing on the problem of models. When a mortal craftsman is asked to make a fi...
(Exodus 15:14) "Peoples heard—they quaked": When the peoples heard that Pharaoh and his hosts were lost in the sea, that the rule of Egypt had ended, and that their idolatry had be...
When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, the news sent shockwaves through the ancient world. The Mekhilta examines the verse "Then the chiefs of Edom were confounded" (Exodus 15:15...
The Mekhilta applies the same logic to Moab that it applied to Edom. The verse says "the mighty ones of Moab were seized with trembling," and the rabbis ask the same question: why?...
The Torah recounts that when the city of Shechem violated Dinah, it was specifically Shimon and Levi who took up swords and avenged her. The verse calls them "the brothers of Dinah...
The Mekhilta asks a question about Kazbi (also known as Cozbi), the Midianite woman who played a central role in the sin at Baal Peor. The verse calls her "the daughter of a prince...
The Mekhilta records a debate about what tree God showed Moses at Marah to sweeten the bitter waters. The verse says simply "And the Lord showed him a tree" — but which tree? The r...
Shimon ben Azzai noticed something strange about the Hebrew phrasing in the Torah's commandments. When Scripture says "heed, you shall heed" (Exodus 15:26), the doubling of the ver...
Shimon ben Azzai expanded his teaching about the doubled verbs in the Torah with an even more radical claim. The principle of "heed, you shall heed" does not only mean that heaven ...
Rabbi Yossi HaModai offered a clever observation about the order in which the Torah lists the foods the Israelites craved in the wilderness. In (Numbers 11:5), the people complain:...
Moses and Aaron delivered a pointed warning to the Israelites who kept complaining about their food in the wilderness. The manna had been given with a "radiant countenance" because...
When God sent quail to the Israelites in the wilderness, the Torah says "it covered the camp" (Exodus 16:13). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael asked the obvious question: covered it t...
Quail fell from the sky in quantities that defy imagination. Rabbi Yoshiyah, quoted in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (a 3rd-century CE halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive comme...
When God sent quail to feed the Israelites in the wilderness, the Mekhilta raises a practical question that reveals something remarkable about divine generosity. One might assume t...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael offers a precise description of how the manna appeared to the Israelites in the wilderness, drawing its details from the verse "and, behold, on the fa...
The Torah describes how the Israelites gathered manna each morning in the wilderness with a doubled expression: "baboker, baboker," literally "morning, morning" (Exodus 16:21). The...
