The Three Things Pseudo-Jonathan Let Moses See on Sinai

The Hebrew Bible says Moses went up Mount Sinai and received the tablets. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus, the expansive Aramaic Targum preserving older traditions in a later redacted form, fills in three concrete details the Hebrew leaves blank.

Who summoned Moses up? An archangel by name. What were the tablets made of? Sapphire from the throne of glory. And when Moses asked to see the divine glory, what specifically was he permitted to see? Not the face, but the tefillin knot at the back. Three Targum passages name the three specifics.

Michael the Prince of Wisdom Issuing the Summons

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 24:1 identifies the messenger who calls Moses up the mountain for the covenant scene. The Hebrew says only and to Moses He said, come up to the Lord. The Aramaic specifies the speaker.

And Michael, the Prince of Wisdom, said to Moses on the seventh day of the month, come up before the Lord. The Targum has the archangel Michael, identified as the Prince of Wisdom in later angelological traditions, deliver the summons. The summons is precise. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders are to ascend. They are to worship at a distance.

The teaching identifies an intermediary the Hebrew passage leaves implicit. The Hebrew is content to attribute the call to the Holy One directly. The Aramaic insists on naming the angelic agent who carried the call to Moses. Michael is, in this passage, the operational interface between the Holy One and the prophet at the moment the covenant scene begins.

The Sapphire Tablets From the Throne of Glory

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 31:18 describes the tablets Moses receives at the end of his forty days. The Hebrew says two tablets of testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God. The Aramaic specifies the stone.

The tablets are sapphire-stone from the throne of glory. They weigh forty seah. They are inscribed by the finger of the Lord. The Targum is giving the tablets a precise provenance and a precise weight. They are not generic stone. They are material taken from the throne above and shaped into the tablets that will be carried down.

The teaching has theological consequence. The tablets and the throne share a material identity. When Israel later breaks the first set of tablets at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:19), they are not merely shattering carved stone. They are shattering something pulled from the structure of the heavenly throne itself. The Targum is sharpening what was at stake in the breaking.

The Tefillin Knot at the Back of the Glory

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 33:23 handles the most intimate of the three details. Moses, in the wake of the golden calf, asks the Holy One to show him the divine glory. The Hebrew has the Holy One reply you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. The Aramaic specifies what the back means.

The Targum has the Holy One promise to make the host of angels pass by. Moses, the Aramaic specifies, will see the handborder of the tefillin of My glorious Shekinah. The face of the Shekinah cannot be seen. The back of the Shekinah, in this reading, is the knot of the head tefillin, the same knot that observant Jews tie at the base of the skull when they bind the phylacteries to the head.

The teaching is remarkable. The Holy One wears tefillin. The knot of those tefillin is what was visible to Moses on the mountain. The image is preserved elsewhere in rabbinic tradition (Berakhot 7a teaches that the Holy One puts on tefillin), but the Targum places the moment specifically here, at the cleft of the rock, in the aftermath of the calf. The morning ritual that observant Jews still perform is, in this reading, a lower-world echo of what Moses saw on Sinai.

Why the Specifics Mattered

Stack the three passages and the Targum's project on the Sinai chapters becomes legible. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses to leave the cosmic moments blank.

The summons came through Michael, the archangel of wisdom. The tablets came from the throne, of sapphire, with a precise weight. The visible aspect of the divine glory was the tefillin knot, the same knot every observant Jew ties on his own head every morning. The Aramaic translator wanted the reader to know that the most concealed events in the Torah have material specifications, and the specifications connect the lower-world reader to the upper-world event.