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Joseph's blessing is the longest Jacob delivers, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan packs it with detail no translator could resist. "Joseph, my son, thou hast become great and mighty... b...
Power draws enemies. Joseph rose from a prison cell to the second throne of Egypt in a single day (Genesis 41:40), and the men he displaced never forgave him. Targum Pseudo-Jonatha...
Joseph survived the slander, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains why. "He returned to abide in his early strength, and would not yield himself unto sin, and subdued his inclination...
Jacob's blessing of Joseph reaches into cosmic language. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves two divine titles worth pausing on. "From the Word of the Lord shall be thy help; and He w...
The ancestral blessings were not universally loved. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan includes a striking aside in Joseph's final benediction. "The blessings of thy father be added to the ble...
Benjamin was the youngest, and Jacob's last blessing might be the most exalted. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the Hebrew "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf" (Genesis 49:27) as a declarati...
The blessings are done. Jacob has said something hard or something heroic about each of his sons — one has lost the birthright, two have been scattered for their rage, one has been...
When the blessings were finished, Jacob turned to the practical. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records his request with the gravity of a last will. "I am to be gathered to my people; bury...
Jacob names the burial site with the precision of a deed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the legal language. "In the cave that is in the Double Field over against Mamre in the la...
When Jacob died, Egypt mourned for seventy days (Genesis 50:3). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains why the Egyptians wept so hard for a foreign patriarch. They were not mourning only ...
Joseph was the second most powerful man in Egypt. He could have ordered the funeral procession with a wave of his hand. Instead, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a curious diplomat...
Joseph's request to Pharaoh hinges on a vow he cannot break. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it simply. "My father made me swear, saying, Behold, I die, in the sepulchre which I hav...
When Pharaoh granted Joseph's request, a procession formed that had no precedent in Hebrew history. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it plainly. "And Joseph went up to bury his fathe...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records a small, telling detail about the funeral caravan. "And all the men of Joseph's house, and his brethren, and his father's household: only their child...
Midway between Egypt and Hebron, the procession stopped. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes the scene. "They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jardena, and the...
When the Canaanite natives saw the Egyptian-Israelite procession mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they did something startling. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it. "They loo...
The funeral was supposed to be solemn. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the wildest scenes in all of midrash instead. "When his sons had brought him into the land of Kenaan, a...
The funeral was over. Jacob lay in the cave of Machpelah, and the family rode back to Egypt together. That should have been the end of it. But when Joseph stopped coming to the fam...
The brothers were terrified. So they did what frightened children do — they invoked the father. "Thus shall you say to Joseph: forgive now the guilt of thy brethren and their sin, ...
Comes the answer. Joseph looks at his brothers — these old, frightened men — and finally explains the awkward meal. "You indeed imagined against me evil thoughts, that when I did n...
The Torah records a small family scene: "And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation; also the sons of Makir the son of Menasheh were born on Joseph's knees" (Genesis...
Joseph is dying. He gathers his brothers — what is left of them — around the bed and speaks words that will hover over the next four hundred years like a lamp burning in a long cor...
There will be false redeemers. Joseph knows this. Before he closes his eyes, he hands his children a test. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis (50:25) expands his oath dramatical...
"And Joseph died, the son of a hundred and ten years. And they embalmed him with perfumes, and laid him in an ark, and submerged him in the midst of the Nilos of Mizraim." The Tora...
"Come, let us take counsel against them in these matters, to diminish them that they multiply not, so as that, should war be arrayed against us, they be not added to our adversarie...
The Torah names two cities: Pithom and Ra'amses. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (1:11) names two others: Tanis and Pelusium. "And they set over them work-masters to afflict t...
Pharaoh's whole policy had one aim — shrink the Hebrews. And this verse is the Targum's quiet demolition of the whole policy. "But as much as they depressed them, so much they mult...
"And they made their lives bitter by hard service in clay and bricks, and all the labour of the face of the field; and in all the work which they made them do was hardness." The Ta...
Pharaoh woke up sweating. In his sleep he had seen a balance. On one pan, all the land of Mizraim — the pyramids, the treasuries, the Nile itself, the whole weight of an empire. On...
Pharaoh confronts the midwives. Why are you letting the boys live? And Shifra and Puvah — in the Targum's Aramaic, Jokheved and Miriam — give an answer so audacious it borders on t...
The Torah says God made the midwives "houses." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (1:21) tells us exactly what those houses were. "And forasmuch as the midwives feared before the...
The Torah says Jokheved "hid him three months." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:2) does the math. "And the woman conceived and bare a son at the end of six months; and she ...
Three months. That is how long a mother can pretend her baby does not cry. "But she could conceal him no longer, for the Mizraee had become aware of him. And she took an ark of pap...
Why was Pharaoh's daughter in the river that morning? The Hebrew says simply: "to bathe." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:5) has a different answer — and it is startling. "...
The princess opens the basket. She does not find a quiet, sleeping infant. She finds a crying baby. "And she opened, and saw the child, and, behold, the babe wept; and she had comp...
"And the child grew, and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter, and he was beloved by her as a son; and she called his name Mosheh, Because, said she, I drew him out of the water of th...
He had grown up in silk. Now he stepped out into the brick kilns. "And in those days when Mosheh was grown up, he went forth to his brethren, and saw the anguish of their souls, an...
The blow did not come first. The vision did. "And Mosheh turned, and considered in the wisdom of his mind, and understood that in no generation would there arise a proselyte from t...
The Hebrew says only "two Hebrew men." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:13) names them. "And he went out the second day, and looked; and, behold, Dathan and Abiram, men of t...
Dathan's answer is a dagger. "Who is he who hath appointed thee a chief man and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, said he, as thou didst the Mizraite? And Mosheh was afraid, and ...
The Torah tells the Midian episode in a sentence. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:21) tells it in a small novel. "But when Reuel knew that Mosheh had fled from before Phara...
Why did the cry of the Hebrews finally pierce heaven? Because Pharaoh had stopped being a tyrant and become a monster. "And it was after many of those days that the king of Mizraim...
"And their cry was heard before the Lord, and before the Lord was the covenant remembered which He had covenanted with Abraham, with Izhak, and with Jakob." The Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
Why did redemption come when it did, and not earlier? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:25) has a startling answer. "And the Lord looked upon the affliction of the bondage of...
The Hebrew text says "the angel of the Lord appeared." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (3:2) gives that angel a name. "And Zagnugael, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in...
"And when it was seen before the Lord that he turned to look, the Lord called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Mosheh, Mosheh! And he said, Behold me." The Targum Pseudo...
"And He said, Approach not hither, take the shoe from thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is a holy place; and upon it thou art to receive the Law, to teach it to the so...
"And He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Izhak, and the God of Jakob. And Mosheh covered his face; for he was afraid to look upon the height of the ...
