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The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line the Torah does not spell out and that the Sages treasured. And it was when she spake with Joseph this day and the next, and he hearkened not ...
When Joseph flees, leaving his garment in her hand (Genesis 39:12), Potiphar's wife does not sit in silence. The Targum reports her pivot: she called the men of the house and said,...
The biblical text says only that Potiphar was furious and imprisoned Joseph. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us something remarkable the Hebrew leaves unstated. Joseph's master to...
The Targum repeats, in miniature, the pattern that has already defined Joseph's life. The captain of the prison confided all the prisoners who were in the house to Joseph's hands, ...
The Targum closes the chapter with a line that the Sages read as the key to the whole Joseph narrative. It was not needful for the captain of the prison to watch Joseph, after the ...
The Targum preserves a grammatical peculiarity that the Sages loved. They dreamed a dream, both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man his own dream, and the interpreta...
The Targum catches a small pastoral detail. Joseph asked the chiefs of Pharoh who were with him in the custody of his master's house, saying, Why is the look of your faces more evi...
The butler and baker give Joseph the standard complaint of prisoners in an ancient city. They have dreamed, and there is no court interpreter available in their cell. The Targum pr...
This is one of the most daring glosses in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The chief butler has told Joseph about a vine with three branches, ripening into grapes that he pressed into Phara...
Joseph's promise to the butler is both specific and ordinary. At the end of three days the memory of thee will come before Pharoh and he will lift up thy head with honour, and rest...
This is one of the most searching moments in the Targum. After interpreting the dream, Joseph adds a request. The Aramaic frames it with a quiet rebuke: Joseph, leaving his higher ...
The Targum preserves a psychological detail the Hebrew only hints at. The chief baker, when he understood the interpretation of his companion's dream, seeing that he had interprete...
The Targum gives the baker's dream two readings, the way it gave the butler's dream two readings. This is its interpretation. The three baskets are the three enslavements with whic...
The Targum does not soften the sentence. At the end of three days, Pharoh with the sword will take away thy head from thy body, and will hang thee upon a gibbet, and the birds will...
On the third day, as Joseph had said, the prophecy lands. The Targum reports it with ceremonial quietness. It was on the third day, the nativity of Pharoh that he made a feast to a...
The Targum supplies the theological punchline the Torah leaves whispered. Because Joseph had withdrawn from the mercy that is above, and had put his confidence in the chief butler,...
The Targum opens chapter 41 with a subtle theological edit. The Hebrew says it was at the end of two years, and Pharaoh dreamed. Pseudo-Jonathan adds a single phrase that rearrange...
The Targum gives us the theological architecture of Pharaoh's sleepless morning. In the morning his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called all the magicians of Mizraim and all...
The Targum records the butler's long-delayed memory. There was with us a Hebrew youth, a servant of the chief executioner; and we recounted to him, and he explained the dream to us...
The Targum preserves the exact phrasing of Pharaoh's summons. I have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter for it; and I have heard of thee, saying, that if thou hear a drea...
The Targum preserves one of the great theological statements in Genesis. And Joseph answered Pharoh, saying, (It is) without me; it is not man who interprets dreams: but from befor...
Pharaoh watched something impossible in his dream. Seven gaunt cows swallowed seven fat ones whole, and when it was done, the thin cows looked exactly as wretched as before. No bul...
When Joseph stood before Pharaoh, he did not hedge. The seven wasted cattle and the seven thin ears scorched by the east wind were not two dreams but one, doubled for emphasis. Tar...
The words are almost shocking in their starkness. After seven years of surplus, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:30) warns that the coming famine will "make all the plenty tha...
When the dream was decoded, Joseph did not stop at interpretation. He handed Pharaoh a policy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:34), the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah that t...
There is a quiet engineering decision tucked inside Joseph's plan that the Torah narrates in a single breath but the Targum lingers on. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:35) de...
The Torah says Joseph stored grain in cities. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:36) adds a detail that changes the picture entirely: the provision was laid up "as in a cavern i...
Pharaoh handed over almost everything. House, people, signet, authority. But one line held back: "only in the throne of the kingdom will I be greater than thou." Targum Pseudo-Jona...
The moment is cinematic. Pharaoh pulls his signet ring from his own finger and slides it onto Joseph's. He drapes him in fine linen. He fastens a collar of gold around his neck. Ta...
The runners went ahead of the second chariot and sang. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:43) preserves the words of that ancient coronation chant: "This is the Father of the ki...
Pharaoh's grant of power to Joseph sounds almost absurd when read slowly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:44) renders it: "without thy word a man shall not lift up his hand t...
The Torah says Pharaoh gave Joseph a wife named Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:45) stops the reader short with a different clai...
The number is almost casual in the text, but the sages could not stop noticing it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:46) records it: "And Joseph was a son of thirty years when ...
Seven harvests, gathered with deliberate care. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:48) records the logistics Joseph used: "he laid up the produce in the cities; the produce of th...
The verse is simple, but the timing is everything. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:50) reports that Joseph fathered two sons "before the year of famine arose," born to Asenat...
Joseph named his second son Ephraim, from the Hebrew root meaning to be fruitful, to increase. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:52) preserves Joseph's explanation with a remar...
The seed itself failed. That is the detail Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:55) adds to the Torah's account: the famine in Egypt was not merely the absence of rain but the ref...
The moment the famine deepened, Joseph opened the storehouses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:56) records the mechanics: "Joseph opened all the treasures and sold to the Miz...
The famine reached Canaan, and Jacob's sons stood around doing nothing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:1) preserves the old man's impatience in a single cutting line: "Why a...
Jacob sent ten sons to Egypt, and they entered not as a group but through ten different doors. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:5) preserves the reason: "every one by one door...
The Torah says Joseph's brothers arrived in Egypt and bowed before him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:6) inserts an astonishing middle act: before they bowed, they searched...
They stood in front of him and did not know him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:7) records the moment: Joseph saw his brothers, recognized them, and then "made himself as a ...
How can someone recognize his brothers if they cannot recognize him? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:8) answers with a very physical explanation: the beard. The mathematics o...
The instant they bowed, he remembered. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:9) reports it without fanfare: "Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed of them." The sheaves and t...
They volunteered the family arithmetic before he asked for it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:13) preserves their confession: twelve brothers, one youngest still with the fa...
Joseph escalates the pressure with a legal framing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:16) preserves the formula: send one to fetch your youngest brother while the rest remain b...
After three days in custody, Joseph reconsiders. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:19) preserves his revised terms: one brother stays in prison, the rest go home with grain "fo...
The confession arrives without prompting. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:21) preserves the exact moment the brothers name what they did: "In truth we are guilty concerning o...
