1,047 related texts · 1 related myths · Page 19 of 22
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...
Joseph escalates the pressure with a legal framing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:16) preserves the formula: send one to fetch your youngest brother while the rest remain b...
The oldest brother had a rough sort of vindication. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:22) preserves Reuben's statement: "Did I not tell you, saying, Do not sin against the yout...
Ten brothers stood before him, and Joseph picked Simeon. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:24) preserves the reason the Torah leaves quiet: Simeon "had counselled them to kill ...
The silver fell out, and the brothers' hearts stopped. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:28) preserves their reaction: "knowledge failed from their hearts, and each wondered wi...
The brothers returned to Canaan and retold the story to their father. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:33) preserves the terms as they remembered them: the lord of the land wi...
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 h...
Kindness frightens a guilty conscience more than cruelty does. When Joseph's men usher the brothers into the viceroy's private house, they should be relieved. No dungeon, no interr...
Joseph's counter-offer is designed to look generous. It is in fact the most dangerous trap he has set yet. "Far be it from me to do thus; the man in whose hand the chalice hath bee...
Judah keeps building the case. He reminds the vizier of every step, every conversation, every refusal. The family could not return to Egypt without the youngest brother. "We told h...
The speech closes where it began. Judah returns, at the end, to the same pledge he gave his father at the beginning of the story, and makes it explicit. "Therefore thy servant beca...
The brothers cannot answer. So Joseph does something astonishing. He invites them closer. "Joseph said to his brothers, Come near, I pray, and examine me. And they came near. And h...
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 thin...
Jacob does not shame his firstborn without also showing him a door. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens (Genesis 49:4) with a startling image: "I will liken thee to a little garden in the...
(Genesis 49:10) is the verse that launched a thousand Jewish hopes. The Hebrew is cryptic: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah.. until Shiloh come." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan wil...
The funeral was over. Jacob lay in the cave of Machpelah, and the family rode back to Egypt together. That should have been the end of it. But when Joseph stopped coming to the fam...
Why did redemption come when it did, and not earlier? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:25) has a startling answer. "And the Lord looked upon the affliction of the bondage of...
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...
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 final verse of our batch is devastating because it describes a man who investigates the truth and then rejects it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:7): And Pharoh sent certa...
One of the most useful things a targum does is flag which commandments were meant to last forever and which were meant only for a single moment. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 1...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:26) translates the covenant at Marah with a surgeon's precision. The Word of the Lord says: If you will truly hearken to the Word of the Lord y...
The word manna itself, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells it, was born from a question. The sons of Israel looked at the fine frost on the desert floor and said to one another Man Hu?...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Moses's answer to Jethro's probing question: "When they have a matter for judgment, they come to me, and I judge between a man and his fellow, ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the conditional terms of Israel's unique standing: "Now, if you will truly hearken to My Word and keep My covenant, you shall be more beloved b...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the most consequential sentences ever spoken by a people: "All the people responded together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we w...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the most dramatic images in all of rabbinic tradition: "Moses brought forth the people from the camp to meet the glorious Presence of the ...
The sentence is short and severe. Whosoever sacrificeth to the idols of the Gentiles shall be slain with the sword, and his goods be destroyed; for ye shall worship only the Name o...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 22:30) sets an unusual standard: holy men, tasting unconsecrated things innocently, shall you be before Me; but flesh torn by wild beasts a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:22) makes a promise that sounds almost like a battle cry: if thou wilt indeed hearken to His Word, and do all that I speak by Him, I wil...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:25) gives a promise that ties worship to health: you shall do service before the Lord our God and He will bless the provision of thy foo...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:31) maps Israel's inheritance: I will set thy boundary from the sea of Suph, to the sea of the Philistaee, and from the desert unto the ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:3) describes the extraordinary moment before the covenant is sealed: Mosheh came and set before the people all the words of the Lord, an...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:4) describes what Moses built at dawn: Mosheh wrote the words of the Lord, and arose in the morning and builded an altar at the lower pa...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:7) records the moment the covenant was sealed: Mosheh took the Book of the Covenant of the Law and read before the people; and they said...
The plain Hebrew of (Exodus 24:12) reads simply that God promised Moses the tablets of stone, the Torah, and the commandment. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot leave it that spare....
The recipe for the holy anointing oil is exact and extravagant: five hundred minas of myrrh, two hundred and fifty of sweet cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of sweet calamus, five h...
When Moses came down Sinai and saw the calf, he did not only smash it. He burned it, ground it finer than any mortar should grind gold, and then he did something stranger. He scatt...
When Moses returned up Sinai to pray, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives us the opening words of his plea, and they are unlike any prayer that came before. "I supplicate of Thee, Thou Lo...
The Torah says the Lord spoke with Moses "face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, refuses to let the metaphor m...
Moses pressed further. How will it be known, he asked, that Israel has truly found favor before God? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives his answer a...
After hearing the Thirteen Attributes, Moses pressed his petition one more time. The words he spoke contain the deepest prayer of Jewish survival. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Arama...
Part of the renewed covenant included a specific military promise. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, lists them by name. "Observe that which I command yo...
Having promised to drive out the six nations, God gave Moses a warning about the mistake that would undo everything. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, re...
God extended the warning about treaties into a warning about tables. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, renders the progression clearly. "Lest you strike ...
The renewed covenant included a reminder of the annual rhythm that would shape Jewish life forever. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, preserves the comma...
The number forty runs through the Torah like a drumbeat. Forty days of flood in Noah's time. Forty years in the wilderness. And here, in (Exodus 34:28) as preserved by Targum Pseud...
The Sabbath is called menucha, rest. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:2) makes clear it was never optional. The verse commands six days of work, then on the seventh day the...
