Why Pseudo-Jonathan Linked Morning Donations to the Altar of the Rich

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus expands two verses near the end of the tabernacle narrative, Exodus 36:3 and Exodus 40:6, into compact theological statements about how voluntary giving and the altar's placement work together to make atonement possible for those with means.

The Donations That Kept Arriving Every Morning

The first passage renders Exodus 36:3. The bare biblical verse records that the artisans received from Moses all the contributions Israel had brought for the tabernacle's construction, and that Israel continued bringing voluntary gifts morning by morning.

Pseudo-Jonathan retains the temporal specificity of the original phrasing. The donations were not delivered in a single drop-off. They arrived morning after morning. The targum's expansion keeps this repetition in the foreground because the repetition itself was the theological substance the targumist wanted preserved.

What the rhythm encodes is the relationship between the donor and the project. Each morning a household sorted through its possessions and selected what would be brought that day. Each morning the priests and artisans received the new arrivals and added them to the working stockpile. The construction of the tabernacle was, in this reading, a daily covenant renewed by the giving population.

The targum's framing also resolves a tension in the bare narrative. Exodus 36:3 sits between two halves of the construction process. The verse is the hinge at which the artisans have what they need but Israel is still bringing more. The targum lets the reader see why that surplus mattered. The point of the daily giving was not the inventory. The point was the daily participation.

Why the Altar Was Placed Where the Rich Could See It

The second passage renders Exodus 40:6, which instructs the placement of the altar of burnt offering before the door of the tabernacle of ordinance. The bare biblical verse gives only the spatial command. Pseudo-Jonathan supplies a theological gloss.

The altar was placed before the door, the targum explains, so that the rich would have access to atonement under specific conditions. Those conditions are stated directly. The rich who spread their tables before their own doors and feed the poor from those tables have their sins forgiven when they bring their offerings to the altar.

The construction is conditional. The targum does not say that wealth blocks atonement. It says that wealth blocks atonement when the wealth is hoarded behind closed doors. The same wealth, when its possessor spreads a public table where the poor are fed, becomes a precondition for the altar's forgiveness to operate.

The spatial detail matters. The altar is before the door of the tabernacle, visible to everyone approaching. The rich man's table, in the targumist's reading, is the mirror image of the altar. The altar is before the door of the sanctuary. The table should be before the door of the house. Both are public surfaces where bounty is distributed rather than hoarded.

The Pattern Across the Two Expansions

Read together the two expansions of Pseudo-Jonathan press the same theological argument from two angles. The morning donations show that giving sustains the sanctuary's construction through repeated participation. The altar's placement explains why the sanctuary's atoning operation, once built, depends on whether the giver's wealth circulates publicly through their household.

Both expansions assume that wealth and worship are bound together at the structural level. The construction of the tabernacle required morning-by-morning giving from those who had things to give. The operation of the tabernacle's altar required that the wealthy maintain visible giving in their daily lives. Neither phase of the tabernacle's life was financed by passive donation. Both depended on continuous active redistribution.

What Pseudo-Jonathan Wanted Preserved

The targumist inserted these glosses because the bare verses leave the social theology implicit. Exodus 36:3 records that gifts kept coming but does not pause to say why the rhythm of arrival was significant. Exodus 40:6 records the altar's placement but does not pause to say what the placement made possible.

What Pseudo-Jonathan preserves is the rabbinic conviction that the tabernacle was never merely a building project. It was a continuous social transaction. The morning gifts kept the construction going. The public tables of the wealthy kept the altar functional once it was in place. The targum's two expansions are the same teaching applied to the two ends of the tabernacle's lifecycle, before its completion and after it. The point in both cases is that voluntary giving made the sanctuary work, and the sanctuary's atoning power depended on whether that giving continued in the lives of the people the altar was meant to serve.

The compilers selected these two verses for expansion because they sit at the structural pivot points of the tabernacle narrative. Exodus 36:3 is the moment when the project has enough but the people are still bringing. Exodus 40:6 is the moment when the project is finished and the question of operation begins. The targum gives the reader the social theology each moment needed.