Parasahat Mishpatim prompts us to ask: what happens the day after Sinai? After thunder, lightning, and the Ten Commandments, what does it truly look like to live with God’s revelation? The Torah’s answer is unexpected. Instead of starting with lofty rituals, it immediately focuses on damages, money, and the laws of a Hebrew slave.
Rashi observes the very first word: “Ve’eleh – And these are the laws.” That small “and,” he explains, connects parashat Mishpatim to what came immediately before. Just as the Ten Commandments were given at Sinai, so too these civil laws – torts, contracts, servants – originate from Sinai. In essence, the laws that regulate our business dealings and how we treat others are not a “lower level” of Torah. They stand on the same Sinai ground as “I am Hashem your God.”
Ramban extends his analysis by exploring the structure. The Torah describes the revelation at Sinai, presents the Ten Commandments, and then immediately shifts into detailed laws of society—starting with the Hebrew slave—before returning to the story of the covenant being sealed. For Ramban, this shows that Mishpatim are not just an add-on; they are the concrete expression of “Who took you out of the house of bondage.” The very first detailed law asks: how do you treat someone who is, again, in a kind of “bondage”—an eved Ivri, a Hebrew slave.
That choice is truly ethical. If we were writing code, we might start with Shabbat, kashrut, or the laws of the Temple. Instead, the Torah begins with the most vulnerable person in the system: someone who has lost financial independence, whose time and labor belong to someone else. The message is clear: now that you have been freed from Egypt, you must never turn around and recreate Egypt for someone else. A Hebrew slave must be treated with dignity, his term is limited, and his release is built into the system. The first test of Sinai is not how loudly we say “Na’aseh ve-nishma,” “we will do and we will listen”, but how we act when we hold power over another human being.
From here, we can see what Mishpatim as a whole are doing. They carry the fire of Sinai into everyday life – into the marketplace, the workplace, the courtroom. Holiness isn’t only in the Temple; it appears in how we pay workers, how we handle damage we cause, and how we speak to someone who owes us money. The “day after Sinai” is reflected in small, often quiet decisions that either protect or harm those around us.
But there is one more step. The Rabbis speak about two kinds of mitzvot: ḥukim, whose reasons are not obvious, and mishpatim, which any decent society might have invented on its own. It would be easy to say: “The mishpatim I keep because I agree with them; the ḥukim I keep because God said so.” By tying our parsha so closely to Sinai, the Torah emphasizes that split. Even the mitzvot that seem to make perfect sense to us are, first and foremost, mitzvot because God commanded them.
That doesn’t mean we turn off our minds. We are meant to understand and appreciate the beauty and logic of these laws. But the foundation is different: I don’t refrain from stealing only because it’s rational; I refrain because God, at Sinai, commanded me not to steal. The fact that it also helps build a just society is a gift and a confirmation, not the ultimate source of the obligation.
So a picture emerges. Rashi and Ramban show us that Mishpatim still connect to Sinai. The opening focus on the Hebrew slave teaches that ethics start where people are most vulnerable. The category of mishpatim reminds us that even when a law is entirely reasonable, we follow it as servants of God, not merely as enlightened citizens. The challenge of parashat Mishpatim, then, is to live a life where every “rational” ethical act is also an act of service of God – so that the voice of Sinai can still be heard in the way we sign a contract, pay a bill, or treat someone in our power.
