13,298 related texts · Page 262 of 278
The offer Jakob put on the table sounded like a bad deal on purpose. I will pass through thy whole flock today, he said to Laban, and will set apart every lamb streaked and spotted...
Jakob added one more clause to the contract, and it is the most striking line of the whole negotiation. My righteousness shall testify for me tomorrow, when my wages shall be broug...
Laban did not just separate the flocks. He placed three days of walking between them — a buffer wide enough that no marked goat could wander home by accident, no hopeful lamb could...
As the marked lambs began to appear, Jakob did not mix them back in. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is precise: he set them apart, placed them in front of the remaining flocks, and then qu...
Laban gathered his kinsmen and chased for seven days until he caught up at Mount Gilead. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan paints the arrival as a contrast too sharp to ignore. Laban had ridd...
And then, unexpectedly, Laban confessed. There is sufficiency in my hand to do evil with thee, he said — the words of a man who has just reviewed his own forces and knows he could ...
Laban went tent by tent. First Jakob's, then Leah's, then the tents of the two concubines. Nothing. And he went out from the tent of Leah, and entered the tent of Rahel (Genesis 31...
Rahel sat on the camel's saddle where the idols lay hidden, and when her father entered she said the words that ended the search: Let it not be displeasing in my lord's eyes that I...
For twenty years Jakob had held his tongue. Every shift of wages, every cold look, every whisper from the sons — he had swallowed them all. Now, after the fruitless search, somethi...
Jakob drew up the final accounting for the court of kinsmen. These twenty years have I been in thy house, serving thee; fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy ...
They built a boundary out of stone. This mound is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I may not pass beyond this mound to thee, and that thou mayest not pass beyond this ...
After the stones were stacked, Jakob did something remarkable. Jakob slew sacrifices in the mount, and invited his kinsmen who came with Laban to help themselves to bread, and they...
As Jakob prepared his message to Esau, he did something strange. He instructed his servants to announce that the great blessing stolen years before had, in effect, come to nothing....
"According to these words you must speak with Esau when you find him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the instruction three times (Genesis 32:20) — first servant, second servant, t...
"I will make his countenance friendly by the gift which goes before me, and afterward I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's priv...
"And he saw that he had not power to hurt him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:26) pauses to notice something the plain verse whispers but does not say outright: the angel lost...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the wrestling angel a confession that the plain text never imagined (Genesis 32:27). When dawn came, the angel pleaded: "Let me go, for the column of t...
"And the sun rose upon him before his time." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:32) preserves one of the tenderest details in the whole Jacob cycle: the sun itself rearranged its s...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws — the prohibition aga...
"And he himself went over before them, praying and asking mercy before the Lord; and he bowed upon the earth seven times, until he met with his brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ge...
"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they wept." In the plain Torah text, this is a moment of pure reconciliation. Targum Pseudo-...
Esau looked at the caravan and asked the question any returning brother might ask: "Who are these with you?" (Genesis 33:5). In the plain text Jacob answers simply, "the children w...
"Receive now the present which is brought to you, because it has been given me through mercy from before the Lord." Jacob's insistence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 33:11) res...
"And all they who came out of the gate of his city received from Hamor and from Shekem, his son; and they circumcised every male, all who came out of the gate of the city." Targum ...
"You have made my name to go forth as evil among the inhabitants of the land, among the Kenaanites and Phezerites. And I am a people of small number, and they will gather together ...
When Jacob returned to Bethel — the very stones where he had dreamed of the ladder decades earlier — he did not simply set up a marker and move on. He raised a pillar of stone on t...
The Torah calls Joseph a na'ar — a youth — when he brings evil reports about his brothers to their father. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:2) gives that single word a whole b...
After the brothers threw Joseph into the pit, they sat down to eat. Then they looked up and saw a caravan. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:25) gives the caravan an unexpected...
After losing two sons, Judah faced a choice. The custom required his third and last surviving son, Shelah, to marry Tamar and try to raise up the line. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (G...
The Targum names them precisely: thy seal, and thy mantle, and thy staff which is in thy hand (Genesis 38:18). Tamar did not ask for silver. She asked for the three objects a man o...
The midwife does something quick and symbolic. As Tamar's twins are being born, one child stretches out a hand from the womb, and the midwife binds it with a scarlet thread, saying...
The second twin pushes his way out ahead of the first, and Tamar — or, in some readings, the midwife — speaks words that the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears as prophecy. With what gre...
The Targum reports the architecture of the household plainly. Potiphar left all that he had in Joseph's hand, and took no knowledge of anything of his, except his wife with whom he...
The Aramaic gives Joseph's answer as a careful, almost bureaucratic list. Behold, my master taketh no knowledge of what is with me in the house, and all he hath he delivereth into ...
Now Joseph reaches the real wall. There is none in the house greater than I, nor hath he restricted me from anything but thyself, because thou art his wife: and how can I do this g...
The Targum repeats, in miniature, the pattern that has already defined Joseph's life. The captain of the prison confided all the prisoners who were in the house to Joseph's hands, ...
The Targum supplies the theological punchline the Torah leaves whispered. Because Joseph had withdrawn from the mercy that is above, and had put his confidence in the chief butler,...
The Targum opens chapter 41 with a subtle theological edit. The Hebrew says it was at the end of two years, and Pharaoh dreamed. Pseudo-Jonathan adds a single phrase that rearrange...
The Targum preserves the exact phrasing of Pharaoh's summons. I have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter for it; and I have heard of thee, saying, that if thou hear a drea...
After three days in custody, Joseph reconsiders. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:19 preserves his revised terms: one brother stays in prison, the rest go home with grain "for ...
The old man counted his losses aloud. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:36 preserves Jacob's lament word by word: "Of Joseph you said, An evil beast hath devoured him; of Simeon...
Reuben tried the one guarantee that could possibly move his father. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:37 preserves the oath: "Slay my two sons with a curse if I do not bring him...
Jacob draws the line. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:38 preserves his refusal: "My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he alone remains of his mother...
There is a kind of tear a powerful man cannot afford to show in public. Joseph, vizier of all Mizraim, feels it rising, and runs."Joseph made haste," the Targum reports, "for his c...
At Joseph's table the platters move in a strange rhythm. Every brother receives a portion. Then Benjamin receives five.Targum Pseudo-Jonathan accounts for the arithmetic. "Benjamin...
In the middle of Judah's speech, a sentence lands that should have broken Joseph's composure on the spot."We told my lord, We have an aged father, and a son of his old age, a littl...
Having named the sin, Joseph reframes it. He does not deny it. He places it inside a larger story."It was not you who sent me hither, but it was from before the Lord that the thing...
When Joseph and Benjamin finally embrace, their tears do not flow for the reasons we expect. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the verse as prophecy."He bowed himself upon his brother B...
