English: “And you shall give to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow” — give to each one according to his portion. “And they shall eat in your gates and be satisfied” — give them enough for their satisfaction. From here they said: One may not give a poor person at the threshing floor less than half a kav of wheat or a kav of barley.
In Sifrei Devarim 303: The midrash turns the list of recipients into a concrete distribution rule and then derives the minimum quantities that satisfy the requirement of “satisfaction.”
Type of Learning
Custom (phrase-by-phrase expansion of the declaration / distribution rule).
What Is Learned
The midrash extracts concrete legal and historical referents from each phrase of the verse, turning the brief biblical language into a detailed map of the mitzvah’s requirements and the experience it recalls.