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"And if a man sells his daughter" (Exodus 21:7) — the Torah permits a father to sell his daughter as a maidservant. The Mekhilta immediately asks: can a mother do the same? The ans...
The Torah states: "And if a man sells his daughter" (Exodus 21:7). The Mekhilta immediately draws attention to a legal distinction embedded in this verse that might otherwise go un...
The Torah states that a father may sell his daughter into servitude (Exodus 21:7). The Mekhilta asks the next logical question: if a father can sell his daughter, can a daughter se...
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...
Let her, then, be bored, as it would, indeed, follow that she should be, viz.: If a son, whose father is not permitted to sell him, is bored, how much more so a daughter, whose fat...
"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 ...
The Torah states: "And if a man sells his daughter as a maid-servant" (Exodus 21:7). The Mekhilta draws a striking inference from this phrasing. A father may sell his daughter as a...
(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 Mekhilta examines how the Torah's laws governing Hebrew servants apply equally to men and women. The verse states "the Hebrew man or the Hebrew woman" (Deuteronomy 15:12), and ...
The Mekhilta addresses the legal status of a Hebrew maid-servant in relation to the laws of bodily injury. The general rule in Torah law is that a servant who loses an "organ promi...
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 ...
R. Yonathan says: It ("according to the ordinance, etc.") speaks of a Hebrew (maid-servant, i.e., that he is to do with his maid-servant according to the ordinance of the Jewish da...
The Torah verse "If another he take for him" (Exodus 21:10) is read by the Mekhilta as the source for a surprising obligation. From this verse, the Sages ruled that a father is obl...
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 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 states in (Exodus 21:12): "If one strikes a man." The language is specific — "a man." The Mekhilta immediately asks the obvious question: does this mean the law only appl...
The Torah states: "And if a man strikes any soul of a man." The Mekhilta examines this verse with extraordinary precision, asking exactly which victims are covered by the prohibiti...
The Mekhilta records a sharp legal debate about how to determine the correct form of execution for a kidnapper. The Torah says a kidnapper must be put to death, using the phrase "m...
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 promises that God will provide "a place where he shall flee" for a person who kills accidentally (Exodus 21:13). This is the institution of the city of refuge, where an u...
The Mekhilta debates the physical dimensions of the refuge space that a person who killed accidentally was confined to. The previous passage established that even in the wilderness...
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 ...
Scripture hereby teaching us that murder (i.e., one's having murdered) overrides the sacrificial service. For it would follow (otherwise), viz.: If the Sabbath, which is overridden...
Rabbi Yitzchak addresses a grammatical question in the verse about striking one's parents that has enormous legal consequences. The Torah states: "And if one strikes his father and...
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 and sells him, and he is found in his hand, he shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:16). The Mekhilta asks what this verse adds, since kidn...
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...
The Torah uses masculine language when describing the crime of kidnapping. (Deuteronomy 24:7) says "if a man be found to have stolen," and (Exodus 21:16) says "one who steals a man...
"And one who steals a man": This would exclude (from liability) his stealing a minor. Whence is it derived that he is liable for stealing a minor? From "If a man be found to have s...
The Torah states plainly: "If a man be found to have stolen a soul" (Deuteronomy 24:7). This is the law against kidnapping, one of the gravest crimes in Jewish jurisprudence, punis...
The Torah says about a kidnapper: "and sells him" (Exodus 21:16). The Mekhilta derives from this phrasing that the kidnapper is liable only if he sells the entire person, not half....
"You shall not steal" — this is the eighth of the Ten Commandments. But what kind of stealing does it prohibit? The Mekhilta argues it refers to kidnapping, not theft of property. ...
"And if one curses his father and his mother" — the Mekhilta notices that this verse uses "and," connecting father and mother together. Taken literally, this might mean the death p...
The Mekhilta asks yet another question about the verse "And if one curses his father and his mother." From (Leviticus 20:9), which says "every man who curses," we would know only t...
The Torah commands, "And if one curses his father and his mother" he is liable for a grave sin (Exodus 21:17). The Mekhilta noticed that the verse as written only clearly applies w...
What happens if your father is a judge? The Torah prohibits cursing judges: "Elohim you shall not curse" (Exodus 22:27). It also prohibits cursing leaders: "And a prince in your pe...
Perhaps the common element between them is that they are dignitaries, and it is their eminence that accounts for this, wherefore you are exhorted against cursing them—as opposed to...
(Exodus 21:18) introduces the laws of personal injury: "And if men quarrel." The Mekhilta asks why this section exists at all. The Torah already states in (Exodus 21:24) the princi...
Rabbi Yoshiyah pushed the question of women in injury law even further. If men and women are truly equated, he argued, why does the Torah mention either gender at all? Let neither ...
Rabbi Yonathan argued that the explicit mention of "a man or a woman" in (Exodus 21:29) was not even necessary to include women in injury law. Two other verses already accomplished...
The Torah says that if men quarrel and one strikes the other "with stone or fist" (Exodus 21:18), the striker is liable. Does this mean liability exists only for these two specific...
Rabbi Nathan analyzed the Torah's laws about lethal weapons with a precise analogy: stone is compared to fist, and fist is compared to stone. This mutual comparison, drawn from the...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael draws a connection between two seemingly unrelated legal passages in the Torah, both involving the concept of metaphorical language in legal contexts....
