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There is a phrase in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan that can stop you in your tracks. "And it was in that little hour, while he had not ceased to speak, that, behold, Rivekah came forth" (...
Once the camels had finished drinking — all ten of them, every last swallow — the servant reached into his pack and took out jewelry. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:22) refu...
Some blessings are said with eyes closed. This one was said with eyes wide open. The servant has just discovered that the girl who watered his ten camels is also the grand-niece of...
Rivekah had only just finished her story, gold still on her hand, when her brother Laban moved. The Torah's text is brief, but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:30) notices the...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns (Genesis 24:31) into a confession. Laban greets the servant with the warmest possible words — "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord" — and then lets slip ...
A small verse. A large courtesy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:32) describes the moment after the greeting: the servant enters, the camels are unharnessed, straw and proven...
This is one of those verses where the Targum tells you a whole murder plot the Torah never mentions. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:33) says the meal set before Eliezer was ...
Given permission to speak, Eliezer opens with a sentence that is not small talk. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:35) has the servant list the blessings God has poured on Abra...
When Eliezer retells the story to Laban and Bethuel, he quotes Abraham directly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:40) preserves the quote exactly as Abraham had spoken it: "Th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:43) gives us something the Torah rarely does. A narrator narrating himself. Eliezer is now sitting at Laban's table, and he is walking his hos...
The servant keeps circling this moment. He circles it because he cannot get over it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:45) has him tell Laban's household: "I had not yet finish...
A careful reader notices the sequence. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:47), Eliezer describes what he did at the well in a very particular order. First, he asked Rivekah w...
Some blessings are thank-you notes. This one is a map. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:48) preserves the servant's second act of worship at the fountain. "And I bowed and wor...
There is a class of moment in the Torah where even the schemers have to stop scheming. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:50) captures one. After Eliezer finishes his story, Lab...
After the consent comes the unpacking. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:53) describes Eliezer bringing out vessels of silver, vessels of gold, and vestments, which he gave to ...
This is one of the most startling single verses in the Targum. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:55) tells us what happened while everyone was still talking. Bethuel, the father of Ri...
The mother and brother gather around Rivekah on the morning she is to leave, and they speak a blessing that the Jewish people have been whispering over their daughters ever since. ...
The trip home was supposed to take weeks. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:61) says it took a day. "And as the way was shortened to him in his journey to Padan Aram, so was it...
Where was Isaac during all this? The Torah says he was "coming from Beer-lahai-roi." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:62) tells us something far more specific. He was coming f...
One verse, a whole liturgy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:63) translates the Hebrew word la-suach — which can mean "to meditate" or "to wander" — as something specific: Isa...
Rebekah sees him before he sees her. From the back of her camel she looks across the field and asks the servant, "Who is the man, so majestic and graceful, who walks in the field b...
This is the verse the Maggid saves for last — the one where grief and joy shake hands. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:67) describes what happened when Isaac brought Rebekah ...
The Torah's bookkeeping of Abraham's later life is precise. He had taken another wife after Sarah, Keturah, and by her and his concubines there were sons. The inheritance had to be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:8) records the death of Abraham in a phrase so compact it can be read in five seconds and pondered for a lifetime. "Abraham expired, and died ...
This is one of the Targum's most surprising explanations. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:11) asks the question the Torah leaves hanging: why, in all the final chapters of his life,...
The Torah in (Genesis 25:17) gives us a short obituary for Ishmael: one hundred and thirty-seven years, and then he "expired and was gathered to his people." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
This is one of the Targum's most humane glosses, tucked into a genealogy verse no one usually stops for. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:19) says: "These are the generations ...
Here is a verse that looks like an accounting entry until you notice what the numbers are doing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:20) records that Isaac was forty years old wh...
Twenty years of marriage and no child. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:21) says Isaac did not pray in his tent, did not pray in his field, did not pray at the local altar. He...
Rebekah is pregnant at last — and the pregnancy is not gentle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:22) describes the twins inside her pressing against each other like men at war....
This is the prophecy Rebekah receives in the study house of Shem, and it reframes every story that follows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:23) preserves the oracle with one ...
Some births announce their children. Esau's birth, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:25), announces an entire character. "The first came forth wholly red, as a garment of ha...
The second twin emerged differently. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:26) gives the detail plainly: "Afterward came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on the heel of Esa...
Two brothers. Two careers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:27) gives the contrast in parallel sentences. Esau grew up a "man of idleness to catch birds and beasts, a man goin...
Of all the Targum's expansions, this one may be the darkest. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:29) describes the day Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils — and tells us exac...
The Torah keeps its genealogies lean, but they are never decorative. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:13) records the names of Ishmael's firstborn children: "Neboi, and Arab, ...
The Torah closes its account of Ishmael's line with a map. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:18) names the borders: "they dwelt from Hindiki unto Chalutsa, which is in face of ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, that wild Aramaic expansion of the Torah, hears something in Esau's words that the plain text only hints at. Esau does not just say, "Behold, I am at th...
The Torah's plain verse reads almost like an afterthought. "He ate and drank, and rose up and went his way; thus Esau despised his birthright" (Genesis 25:34). Five short verbs for...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan wants you to notice something the plain verse almost glosses over. This is not the first famine in Canaan. It is the second. "And there was a mighty fami...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan catches Isaac mid-thought. "It had been in Izhak's heart to go down to Mizraim," it tells us (Genesis 26:2). The famine has struck. His father went down ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is careful with one phrase above all others — the Memra, the Word of God. Where the Hebrew simply says "I will be with thee and bless thee," the Aramaic ...
The covenant that God first made with Abraham under the night sky is spoken again — this time to Isaac. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the same thunderous promise. "I w...
The pattern returns. Pseudo-Jonathan knows it, and expects us to know it too. Abraham had done this twice — in Egypt and in Gerar — saying of Sarah, she is my sister, because he fe...
The Torah uses a small, shimmering verb for what Isaac and Rebekah are doing when the king of Gerar catches sight of them. "Izhak was disporting with Rivekah his wife" (Genesis 26:...
There is no anger in Abimelech's voice, but there is pain. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records the king calling Isaac and saying, "Nevertheless she is thy wife. Why hast thou said, ...
Abimelech's second sentence to Isaac is sharper than his first. "Why hast thou done this to us? It might have been that the king, who is the principal of the people, had lain with ...
When the Philistines try to erase Abraham's memory, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what Isaac does. He digs. Again. "And Izhak digged again the wells of water which the servan...
