6,276 texts · Page 121 of 131
"And He said, The oppression of My people who are in Mizraim is verily manifest before Me, and heard before Me is their cry on account of them who hold them in bondage; for their a...
"And I have revealed Myself to thee this day, that by My Memra they may be delivered from the hand of the Mizraee, to bring them up out of the unclean land, unto a good land, and l...
"And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel cometh up before Me, and the bruising of the Mizraee wherewith they bruise them is also revealed before Me." The Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
Moses has asked for a sign. God gives him a sign stranger than any wonder. "But He said, Therefore My Memra shall be for thy help; and this shall be the sign to thee that I have se...
"And Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I will go to the sons of Israel, and say to them, The Lord God of your fathers hath sent me to you: and they will say to me, What is His Na...
"And the Lord said unto Mosheh, He who spake, and the world was; who spake, and all things were. And He said, This thou shalt say to the sons of Israel, I AM HE WHO IS, AND WHO WIL...
"And the Lord said again unto Mosheh, Thus shalt thou speak to the sons of Israel: The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Izhak, and the God of Jakob, hath sent me...
"Go, and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, The Lord God of your fathers hath appeared unto me, the God of Abraham, Izhak, and Jakob, saying, Remembering, I have remem...
At the burning bush, the Holy One does not merely announce a rescue. He swears it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase preserved alongside the Torah, renders the divine ...
Before Moses ever steps into Pharaoh's throne room, God rehearses the scene with him in advance. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the expansive Aramaic paraphrase, preserves the staging: th...
Here is a difficult teaching: the Holy One tells Moses the outcome before the negotiation begins. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it with unsettling clarity: it is manifest before Me t...
Before the first plague falls, God speaks in future tense. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the warning with striking physicality: I have sent forth the stroke of My power, and have ...
The Torah's Hebrew tells the Israelite women to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver, gold, and clothing before the Exodus. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds something unforgettable: ...
At the burning bush, the Holy One asks Moses to do something that violates every shepherd's instinct. The staff he has carried through decades in Midian has just become a serpent. ...
After Moses grasps the serpent by the tail and it becomes a rod, the Holy One explains the purpose of the miracle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it plainly: In order that they may be...
The second sign at the burning bush is more disturbing than the first. The serpent was outside Moses' body; the leprosy is on it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the bluntness of ...
The mercy arrives as quickly as the warning. The Holy One says to Moses: Return thy hand into thy bosom — Aitaph in the Aramaic — and when Moses withdraws it, it had become clean a...
The third sign at the burning bush is the one that rehearses the first plague. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with bare clarity: thou shalt take of the water of the river and ...
Even after three signs, Moses refuses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the protest with a phrase more vivid than the Hebrew: Moses is of a staggering mouth and staggering speech —...
The Holy One answers Moses' protest about his lame speech with a question that has echoed through three thousand years of Jewish reflection. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with ...
Four refusals in, the Holy One's patience runs out. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the flash: the anger of the Lord was kindled against Mosheh. This is unusual. The Torah rarely ...
Once Aaron is appointed the spokesman, the Holy One explains how the chain of communication will actually work. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the threefold structure: thou shalt...
Before Moses can begin the Exodus, he has to say goodbye to the family that took him in. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the scene's restraint. Moses does not march out. He return...
Back in Midian, the Holy One delivers a piece of news that unlocks the Exodus. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the phrasing with startling specificity: they have come to nought, a...
Here is one of the most extraordinary expansions in all of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The biblical Hebrew says only that Moses took the rod of God in his hand. The Aramaic adds a cosm...
On the road to Egypt, the Holy One issues a warning that has troubled readers for two millennia. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan softens the Hebrew's I will harden his heart into something ...
On the road to Egypt, one of the strangest scenes in the Torah unfolds. The Hebrew is terse to the point of confusion: the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Targum Pseudo-Jonath...
The scene is brief, bloody, and extraordinary. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with theological clarity: Zipporah took a stone, and circumcised the foreskin of Gershom her son,...
The resolution is as swift as the crisis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the inn scene with a verse the Hebrew almost whispers: the destroying angel desisted from him. The angel ste...
After the terror at the inn, the reunion at Sinai feels like exhale. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the geography with reverent precision: Aaron came and met him at the mountain ...
The first public assembly ends not in riot but in worship. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the triple movement: the people believed, and heard that the Lord had remembered the son...
The confrontation finally arrives. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the opening line with ceremonial weight: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Release My people, that they ma...
Pharaoh's reply is one of the most arrogant utterances in the entire Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes explicit what the Hebrew only implies: The name of the Lord is not made kno...
When Pharaoh refuses, Moses and Aaron press the request with a telling clarification. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves their plea: The Name of the God of the Jehudaee is invoked by...
Pharaoh's response to the slaves' religious request is to tighten the screws. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the logic with cruel precision: the (same) number of bricks which the...
The cruelty has a chain of command. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the structure: the exactors whom Pharoh set over them as officers beat the sons of Israel, saying, Why have not...
The Israelite foremen march into Pharaoh's court and deliver one of the boldest complaints in the Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders their protest with an expanded final clause:...
The foremen walk out of Pharaoh's court knowing they have lost. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the grim recognition: the foremen of the sons of Israel saw that they were in evil,...
When the foremen finally confront Moses and Aaron, their rage is spectacular. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the accusation: Our affliction is manifest before the Lord, but our p...
The answer to the foremen's despair comes from the Holy One, not from Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the divine reassurance: Now have I seen what Pharoh hath done: for by ...
The Holy One explains something astonishing to Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the distinction between the revelations: I was revealed unto Abraham, and to Izhak, and to Ja...
God outlines the Exodus in a sequence of verbs that the sages will later count as the Arba Leshonot Shel Geulah — the Four Expressions of Redemption. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserv...
The fifth and deepest verb of redemption arrives in the next verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with covenantal precision: I will bring you nigh before Me to be a people, a...
The Exodus closes the loop that began with Abraham. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the full covenantal claim: I will bring you into the land which I covenanted by My Word to give...
Moses returns to the slaves with the five expressions of redemption — and they do not hear him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the heartbreak: Mosheh spake according to this to t...
After the slaves refuse to hear him, Moses turns to God with a new version of his old protest. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the logic: Behold, the sons of Israel do not hearken...
The Holy One does not argue with Moses. He simply issues a new set of orders. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the dual commission: the Lord spake with Mosheh and with Aharon, and ...
In the middle of the Exodus narrative, the Torah pauses for a genealogy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with the ceremonial weight of a formal record: These are the heads of t...
