1,036 related texts · 11 related myths · Page 19 of 22
The Torah touches on this, not directly, but in subtle glimpses. the story turns to how the death of Aaron, the High Priest, is described, and what Moses thought of it. We find thi...
The manna story in (Exodus 16) raises an obvious question: where did this miracle food come from? The Hebrew Bible says God "rained bread from heaven." The Targum Jonathan gives a ...
Amalek's attack on Israel at Rephidim is only a few verses in (Exodus 17). The Targum Jonathan expands it into an epic confrontation with backstory, supernatural geography, and a w...
In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro visits Moses in the wilderness, gives advice about delegating judges, and leaves. The Targum Jonathan on (Exodus 18) transforms this administrative visi...
The revelation at Sinai is awe-inspiring in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan on (Exodus 19) makes it terrifying. It adds details about God physically uprooting the mountain, I...
In the standard Hebrew text, God takes the Levites instead of Israel's firstborn sons. The Targum Jonathan adds details that transform this administrative swap into a high-stakes t...
Transporting the Tabernacle was the most dangerous job in ancient Israel. The Targum Jonathan makes clear that one wrong glance at the sacred vessels meant death by divine fire. Wh...
The day after Korah's company was swallowed by the earth, the people of Israel accused Moses and Aaron of murder. God sent a plague. And Aaron did something no other priest would e...
When Miriam died on the tenth day of the month Nisan, the well that had sustained Israel throughout their desert wanderings vanished. The Targum makes this connection explicit in a...
After the plague killed twenty-four thousand, God ordered a new census. The Targum's version of (Numbers 26) opens with a phrase absent from the Torah: "the compassions of the heav...
The Blessing of Moses in (Deuteronomy 33) gets the full Targum treatment, every tribe's destiny expanded, every blessing loaded with specifics the Torah never mentions. It opens wi...
Who wrote the Hebrew Bible? The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b provides a complete accounting, attributing every book to a specific author. Moses wrote his own book, the Torah. And also ...
When Moses was born, the entire house filled with light. According to Sotah 12a, his mother Yocheved saw immediately that he was special, the Torah's phrase "she saw that he was go...
The Hebrew Bible says God will "pass through" Egypt on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12:12). Targum Onkelos changes this to God will "become revealed in" Egypt. God does not tr...
The Hebrew Bible says God "descended upon" Mount Sinai in fire (Exodus 19:18). Targum Onkelos will not allow God to descend. He writes: "God became revealed upon it in fire." The m...
As I live, declares the Lord God, I will reign over you with a strong hand, etc., and with overflowing fury: It is taught, we do not have less than ten [verses about God's] kingshi...
Rise! Shine! For your light has come. Rebe Yochanan said: this can be compared to one who was going on his way in the evening. One comes along and kindles a candle for him, and it ...
Legend from "Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Eicha Rabati" [From "Beit Akeid Haggadot" Part 1, 37] God said to Jeremiah, "Go to Anathoth," for as long as Jeremiah was in...
The Book of the Wellspring of Wisdom When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the clou...
It is taught (in a baraita (a teaching from outside the Mishnah)): Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Yosei, said: "All acts of charity and kindness that Jews perform in this world make gr...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
Two men came to pray before Rabbi Eliezer. One prayed at enormous length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that stretched on and on. The other prayed briefly,...
Two men came before Rabbi Eliezer to pray. One prayed at great length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that went on and on. The other prayed briefly, a few w...
The birth of Moses was no ordinary event. According to the ancient chronicles preserved in Jerahmeel and the writings of Josephus, the arrival of Israel's greatest prophet was prec...
A desperately poor woman came before the prophet Elijah with nothing in the world except a single coin. She had no family to support her, no trade to sustain her, and no prospect o...
God looked down at the world before the flood and saw something He hadn't seen since the days of Adam, a civilization that had talked itself into impunity. The wicked had done the ...
Hell has seven names. This is what Aggadat Bereshit says when Malachi promises "the day is coming, burning like an oven" (Malachi 3:19). The rabbis did not flinch from the geograph...
Isaiah says God is "calling from the east a bird of prey, a man of my counsel from a distant land" (Isaiah 46:11). The rabbis identified that bird of prey as Abraham. He came from ...
King David grew old, and no one could warm him (1 Kings 1:1). The doctors tried blankets. They tried attendants. His body, which had survived lions and bears and Goliath and armies...
Jacob blessed Esau's son but knew the blessing came from somewhere deeper than himself. "And God shall give you the dew of heaven" (Genesis 27:28), this is the dew of Mount Hermon,...
Joseph was brought down to Egypt (Genesis 39:1). Lamentations gives the frame: "Good is the man who sits alone and is silent, for he will bear the yoke upon himself. He will put hi...
Moses stood before Israel and said: "You have been shown to know that the Lord, He is God; there is none beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35). Not told, shown. The plagues, the sea, the ...
When the Holy One announced that He was going to give the Torah to flesh and blood, the angels objected. "What is man that You are mindful of him," they said, quoting the psalm, "a...
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had a habit the other sages envied: the prophet Elijah came to him as a companion. The Exempla preserves the memory of one of their walks. Elijah took Rabbi J...
An apostate once led the king into a synagogue at precisely the hour when the Torah reader was chanting the verse from Deuteronomy: "How can one pursue a thousand, and two put ten ...
The prophet Elijah was traveling through the world with a disciple, the kind of journey the Sages often assigned Elijah in their stories, testing whether his disciple could see the...
Two men in the Babylonian exile claimed to prophesy in the name of the Lord. Their names were Ahab ben Kolayah and Zidkiah ben Ma'aseyah. Their false oracles are mentioned with dis...
When Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, called the Great, lay dying, he gathered his students for a last round of teachings that has the quality of prophecy more than of instruction. He l...
A Tzeduki, a Sadducee, member of the party that rejected the Oral Torah, once came to Rabbi Abhu with a question meant to sting. "Your God is a priest," he said, "for it is written...
The midrashic retelling of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE preserves an image that belongs to nightmares. The high priest stood in the burning courts of the Beit HaM...
When Sennacherib the Assyrian emperor came against Jerusalem, his pride was as tall as his army. The midrash tells how God humbled him in a sequence of ordinary-seeming errands. Fi...
The rabbis counted the ways a human being can leave this world. They arrived at nine hundred and three, derived from the verse, “Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death&...
When God commanded Aaron and his sons to kindle the lamps of the menorah in the Tabernacle, Aaron worried. The tribal princes were bringing their own magnificent dedication offerin...
The night is almost over. The angels have told Lot that the city is finished. (Genesis 19:14) describes his frantic effort to save the only other relatives he has in town. "And Lot...
When Abraham hesitates, the Holy One settles it with a line that should be underlined in every copy of the Torah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:12), the Aramaic makes th...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not let us wonder how Rebekah heard. "The words of Esau her elder son, who thought in his heart to kill Jakob, were shown by the Holy Spirit to Rive...
The moment Rahel gave birth to Joseph, something shifted in Jakob. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us that the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, settled upon him, and he looked ahead a...
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...
