“Let us make humankind” (Genesis 1:26)—whom is God addressing? Across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, some interpreters have identified God’s audience as the angels but have assigned them strikingly different roles in humanity’s creation: collaborators, creators, or critics who question the wisdom of bringing humans and their corruption into existence.
At the climax of the binding of Isaac, Abraham sees אַיִל אַחַר “a ram behind” (MT)... or does he see אַיִל אֶחָד “one ram” (SP, LXX, etc.)? Both readings are developed in midrash: aḥar into Israel’s future redemption through the shofar, eḥad into the primordial ram created for the Akedah—two paths that converge in the shofar of Rosh Hashanah.
Also known as מוקדם שהוא מאוחר בענין, “phrases written out of order,” Rabbi Eliezer’s 31st principle of exegesis helps solve interpretive difficulties, such as: Does Samuel really sleep in the Tabernacle next to the ark? Why is Lot’s property referred to as “Abraham’s nephew”? What does it mean that Pharaoh’s daughter washes on the Nile?
First attested to in the 10th century Chronicles of Moses, a midrash relates how Pharaoh had lions guarding the palace entrance, tearing up any unwanted visitors. Due to its popularity, it is also preserved in a 15th century mahzor, as part of its Aramaic targum to the Song of the Sea.
Rachel and Leah give Jacob their maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah, as wives to bear children on their behalf. The four sons born to the maidservants are named by Rachel and Leah to express their own feelings and experiences of having more of “their” own children. Yet the Bible consistently calls them the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah and counts them as Jacob’s sons, part of the twelve tribes of Israel. Should Bilhah and Zilpah then not be considered matriarchs?
The biblical narrative presents Isaac bound on the altar and spared by an angel—but hints in the text suggest that in an earlier version Abraham actually sacrificed his son. Medieval midrash, projecting national grief and destruction onto the biblical story, imagines Isaac was killed and resurrected. In the 20th century, Jewish artists likewise depict Isaac as dead as a symbol of mourning over the Holocaust, war, and more recently October 7th.
In the biblical narrative (Genesis 26, 28), Esau marries Judith, Basemath, and Mahalath. A later genealogical list of Edomite clans (Genesis 36) says that he married Adah, Aholibamah, and Basemath. To make sense of this contradiction, medieval commentaries offer creative backstories, yielding different tallies for the total number of Esau’s wives.
Why would God make righteous people suffer just to test their faithfulness? With Job, the Bible is explicit that it was in response to Satan’s challenge, but what about Abraham? Jubilees (2nd cent. C.E.), and later the Talmud and midrash, reimagine the Akedah to have been instigated by Mastema, the Satan, or jealous angels. The midrash goes further and envisions the demon Samael tempting Abraham to make him fail.
Sarah is absent from the biblical account of Isaac’s binding, and there’s no indication that Abraham even discussed God’s command with her. Would she have been an active participant, a faithful supporter, or a grief-stricken mother? Later interpreters filled in her role according to their religious and cultural contexts.
In the 2nd century C.E., when Christianity emerged as a religion, theologians such as Justin and Chrysostom interpreted Paul’s letters to mean that Christians with faith in Jesus are Abraham’s spiritual descendants through Sarah. Jews, in contrast, are only his flesh descendants, banished like Hagar. Genesis Rabbah responds that after Sarah’s death, Abraham remarried Hagar—now called Keturah, “adorned” (kitra) with commandments and good deeds—and had many more children with her than he did with Sarah.
The Tikkunei Zohar, a kabbalistic work composed in 14th-century Spain, offers seventy interpretations of the Torah’s first word, bereshit. This article traces how: The understanding of the Torah as multivocal culminated in its formulation, “the Torah has seventy faces,” in the 12th-century Numbers Rabbah (Part 1). The Tikkunei Zohar saw this as a key theological principle and applied it programmatically (Part 2). R. Nathan Spira and Ramchal interpreted other words of Torah, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote his famous stories to prepare readers for the Torah’s seventy meanings (Part 3).
The command to go to war against Sihon, even though his territory lies east of the Jordan River (Deuteronomy 2:24–25), seemingly marks the beginning of the conquest of the promised land and reflects a tradition in which Moses, not Joshua, leads it. But instead, Moses asks to cross the land peacefully (vv. 26–29). The Midrash portrays this choice as disobedience that God ultimately validates. A literary critical approach highlights how Moses’s response is a redaction, an inner-biblical midrash, that reconciles different layers of the text.
Potiphar’s wife sets up her friends to learn about Joseph’s beauty for themselves, the hard way, in a story that appears in both rabbinic midrash and the Quran. Sefer HaYashar, a 16th century midrashic work, dramatizes this story in a way sympathetic to her character, even giving her the name Zuleikha, borrowed from Islamic sources.
Saint Bruno the Carthusian’s (1030–1101) method of biblical interpretation took literary structure and grammar into consideration in applying select Christological readings. Rashi, a younger contemporary, created a similar methodology by incorporating only midrashim that conform to peshuto shel miqra, “the plain sense of Scripture.” Was this Rashi’s response to the threat of Bruno’s influential work?
In the final blood ceremony formalizing the covenant at Sinai, how informed is Israel about the covenant’s details when they declare, na’aseh v’nishma, “let us do and [then] let us hear”?
When Pharaoh takes Sarai into his palace, rather than being a passive victim, as in the Bible, the midrash has Sarai taking her complaint directly to God and commanding an angel regarding her protection and the punishment of her captors.
In several midrashim, God lovingly lifts Mount Sinai over the Israelites to protect them from the dangers of the revelation. One midrash, however, has God threatening to bury the Israelites with the mountain if they don’t accept the Torah. The difference is the intertext.
Esau’s attempt to block Jacob’s burial at the Cave of Machpelah ends in his gruesome death.
The theme of a divine creator’s right to assign territory to his people is pervasive in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature. Perhaps the rabbinic midrash which suggests that the Torah begins with creation to defend Israel against the accusation they stole the land of Canaan were onto something.
Moses extends the covenant to all of Israel, “from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water” (Deuteronomy 29). The midrash connects this group with the Gibeonites of Joshua 9, creating an anachronism which later rabbinic commentators try to resolve.
The Torah is clear that God refuses to allow the exodus generation to enter the land as a punishment for their sinful reaction to the spies’ report. Maimonides, however, argues that the punishment was a ruse; God never intended to allow that generation to enter the land.
The popular Jewish custom to remove drops of wine while listing the plagues goes back to the Middle Ages, but the ubiquitous explanation that we do this out of sadness for what happened to the Egyptians does not. When did this explanation develop and how did it become so dominant?
A midrash imagines Queen Esther reciting Psalm 22 the moment she was about to enter Ahasuerus' inner court. Are the rabbis responding to the Passion Narrative, in which Jesus, in his final moments, recites this lament on the cross?
1 Maccabees recounts how Mattathias instigated a rebellion against the Greeks out of zealotry against Jewish idolatry. Later midrashim tell how Mattathias’ daughter Channah goaded her father and brothers into fighting the Greeks to protect her from being raped by the local governor.
Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac) wrote the most famous Jewish Bible commentary in history. Over 900 years later, scholars still argue about the nature of the commentary: Is it an attempt to explain peshat, the plain meaning of the biblical text, or is it an anthology of midrash?
Rachel weeps over her exiled descendants and God hears her plea (Jeremiah 31:14–16). Expanding on this passage, the rabbis in Midrash Eichah Rabbah envision Jeremiah awakening the patriarchs and Moses to plead with God to have mercy on Israel. Upon their failure to move God, the matriarch Rachel intervenes successfully.
Already in 1877, Marcus Kalisch, one of the first Jewish scholars to engage in the critical study of the Bible, noted that the story of Balaam’s donkey is a late insertion which contradicts the rest of the story, both narratively and ideologically. Indeed, in the main story, Balaam is a prophetic character to be respected, while the supplement lampoons him.
Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who becomes faithful to the God of Israel, hiding two Israelite spies when the king of Jericho sends men to capture them. The rabbis imagine her as a superhumanly seductive woman who knows the secrets of all the men in Jericho, as well as the ultimate example of repentance. The biblical story, however, suggests a more complex character, who worked within the power structures around her.
In English, to covet means to desire someone or something obsessively, wrongfully, and/or without due regard for the rights/feelings of others. It is a strong emotion, to be avoided. But does “covet” capture the meaning of the Hebrew verb חמד?
Rebecca, informed by God of her sons’ destinies, thwarts her husband’s effort to bless Esau. The Torah thus portrays an assertive Rebecca in contrast to a weak and uninformed Isaac. Early Jewish interpreters took conflicting approaches to this unusual depiction of a patriarchal couple.
Moses and R. Judah HaNasi implore: “I would be most grateful if you would maintain the Torah after me.”
Why the rabbis came to imagine Ahasuerus as a usurper who halted the rebuilding of the Temple and his wife Vashti as a wicked and grotesque Babylonian princess, who lived as a libertine and persecuted Jews.
Midrash Chad Shenati (ca. 10th cent.), discovered in the Cairo Genizah, praises Isaac for praying for Rebecca to have children, criticizing Abraham for not doing the same for Sarah, who is barren for much longer. Emphasizing the sensivity of Isaac, the only monogamous patriarch, is in line with the trend towards monogamy in Israel at the time of Midrash Chad Shenati’s composition.
Esau’s plan to kill Jacob and his “dotted” kiss upon their reunion has been cited by rabbinic authorities, such as Rav Moshe Feinstein, as evidence that antisemitism is inherent. This idea is not found in the Torah or the Talmud.
A set of homilies from the Genizah connects two biblical readings (sidrot) in Leviticus by emphasizing the importance of the mitzvah of orlah as a key to inheriting and remaining on the land.
An ancient Yelamdeinu Rabbeinu homily connects the covenantal nature of the prohibition to write down the Oral Law, and recite the Written Torah orally, to a novel reading of Gen 18:17-19: God’s choice of Abraham and his descendants to be exclusive participants in God’s own mystery cult.
The historical association of Abraham and Nimrod with Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism
Tracing the tannaitic and biblical sources for the famous claim that God held Mount Sinai over the Israelites and threatened to bury them if they did not accept the Torah.
The well-known rabbinic principle of אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה (there is no chronological order in the Torah) is often understood to be a hermeneutical solution to a textual, peshat problem. The principle, however, should be understood as midrashic, formulated to highlight other reasons for which biblical accounts could have been juxtaposed.
Does Abraham really need to be historical in order to claim an important role in Jewish religious consciousness? Should the Torah be seen as a historical account reported by God, or simply as the story of God?
The details of Moses birth story do not entirely cohere. By examining the midrash, and sifting through layers of the Torah text itself, we uncover a series of problems and solutions in the story which help to elucidate the way the text and its traditions evolved over time.
The midrashic Parable of the Illuminated Palace centers on Abraham and the existence of God. Maimonides’ interpretation of the parable envisions an Aristotelian Abraham for whom God is a scientific fact.
