465 related texts · 4 related myths · Page 6 of 10
Exodus chapter 6 is mostly genealogy, the kind of passage readers skim. The Targum Jonathan turns it into a minefield of hidden revelations. The chapter opens with God revealing th...
The place was called Shittim, and the Targum explains the name: it derives from shetutha, meaning foolishness and depravity. The Targum's version of (Numbers 25) describes Moabite ...
The war against Midian in the Targum's version of (Numbers 31) is a supernatural thriller. Twelve thousand Israelite soldiers went out with Phinehas carrying "the Urim and Thummim ...
Life inside the ark was not paradise. According to Sanhedrin 108b, Noah and his family worked around the clock to keep every animal alive. And one feeding mistake nearly cost Noah ...
The Hebrew Bible says God established a covenant with Noah, setting the rainbow as its sign (Genesis 9:12-17). Targum Onkelos renders every instance of "between Me and you" as "bet...
A man with two heads appeared before King Solomon with an unusual legal claim. He was part of a family dividing an inheritance, and he demanded a double portion, one share for each...
The flood waters had covered everything. Noah had been sealed in the ark for months, the rain, the silence, the slow recession of the water, the waiting. Then the text says simply:...
God told Noah to enter the ark, and then, after the flood, He told him to leave it. "Go out from the ark" (Genesis 8:16). A simple command, except the rabbis hear in it a whole the...
"A little that the righteous have is better than the abundance of many wicked" (Psalm 37:16). The rabbis of Aggadat Bereshit loved this verse because it turned ordinary logic on it...
Israel in exile speaks like a child who has finally stopped lying. "Master of the Universe, at first I said 'I have not sinned,' and You brought suffering upon me. Now I say: I hav...
A man in the Talmud (Bava Batra 58a) once overheard his wife whispering to their daughter. Of their ten sons, she admitted, only one was truly his. She would not say which. The fat...
When Noah released a bird to test whether the floodwaters had receded, the Torah tells us he sent out a raven (Genesis 8:7). The midrash on this verse imagines an argument breaking...
Monobaz was a prince of the royal house of Adiabene, a small kingdom east of the Tigris whose royal family famously converted to Judaism in the first century CE. His mother Queen H...
When the waters of the flood began to rise and every living thing scrambled toward the ark, a strange creature came to Noah's gate, the Lie. The Lie asked to be admitted. Noah look...
Gaster's exemplum No. 303 preserves a Jewish folktale about a father's last clever gift to his son. A wealthy Jewish merchant lay dying in a distant city far from home. He drew up ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 399, drawn from the Ben Attar collection of medieval Jewish exempla, preserves a courtroom puzzle about a cunning father's last will. A wealthy Jewish merchan...
A dying father called his only son to the bedside and left him two pieces of advice: occupy yourself with Torah study, and give generously to tzedakah. The inheritance he handed on...
Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair was one of the strictest ascetics in the Talmud. He never touched another person's bread. He would not allow his donkey to eat untithed fodder, the animal it...
After the flood, Noah broke fresh ground for a vineyard. He had tasted the grape and prized it twice, for its fruit and for its juice. As he worked, Ha-Satan, the heavenly Accuser,...
The rabbis noticed a quiet escalation in the promises made to the patriarchs about the land. To Abraham, God said, “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 5:29) preserves the folk etymology of Noah's name. Lamech calls his son "Noach," which the Targum glosses as "Consolation," saying: "This shall c...
The Torah calls Noah "a righteous man, perfect in his generations." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:9) tightens the description: "Noah was a just man, complete in good works i...
The verdict lands, and it lands on Noah's ear first. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:13) gives us the direct speech: "The end of all flesh cometh before Me, because the earth ...
The Torah says to set a "tzohar" in the ark, a mysterious word usually translated "window" or "light." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:16) tells us Noah had to fetch it. "Go t...
How did every species find the ark? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:20) gives an answer the Torah does not. "Of the fowl after its kind, and of all cattle after its kind, and ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:23) ends the Flood with six words the reader will never forget: Noah only was left, and they who were with him in the ark. The Targum has just ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:13) dates Noah's first real look at the new earth with the kind of precision the Aramaic loves. It was the six hundred and first year of Noah's...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:20) is one of the most dreamlike details in the whole Flood cycle. Noah began to be a man working in the earth. And he found a vine which the r...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:24) adds a detail that quietly reshapes the whole story. The biblical Hebrew simply says Noah awoke and knew what his younger son had done to h...
A genealogy in the Hebrew Bible almost always repays slow reading. The Targumist on (Genesis 11:29) drops a single clause into the list of wives and changes the whole family tree: ...
Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, bears Jacob a son whom Rachel names Dan, from the Hebrew din, "judgment" (Genesis 30:6). Rachel says, God has judged me and heard my prayer. The Targum P...
The house turned cold long before anyone said a word out loud. Jakob heard the words of the sons of Laban, not spoken to him, but about him (Genesis 31:1). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
Og did not fit inside the ark. That is the whole problem. The world was drowning, the animals were lining up before Noah, and the giant who would later become king of Bashan stood ...
Genesis Rabbah turns to Noah And The Raven. The Torah tells us, "Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; it went to and fro until the waters had ...
The story of Pinḥas, as told in Bamidbar Rabbah, shines a light on just how vital shalom is. The story begins with a moment of intense crisis. The Israelites are straying, and divi...
That even the greatest among us can have their moments of… well, let’s call it humility. It’s a section that explores how even Moses, the ultimate lawgiver, experienced moments whe...
In the Torah, names often carry a powerful weight, hinting at a person's destiny or reflecting a significant moment. Take Noah, for example. (Genesis 5:29) tells us, "He called his...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Noah and Creation of Flood. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana makes a pretty stark claim: that the ten tribes of Israel were even worse than the generation wiped out b...
That feeling, that precarious balance between merit and grace, is at the heart of a fascinating discussion about Noah in Bereshit Rabbah, a classic collection of rabbinic interpret...
Noah is pictured as the good wine still hidden in a ruined cluster, the one life worth saving when a generation collapses. Rabbi Simon starts us off with a powerful image from (Isa...
In Bereshit Rabbah, a classic collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Genesis, we find a fascinating discussion about the depth of that relationship. Rabbi Yoḥanan, R...
Do we receive blessings because of our ancestors' good deeds? That idea feels familiar, doesn’t it? readers often hear that the Holy One, blessed be He, shows kindness to descendan...
Take the story of Noah. (Genesis 6:9) tells us: "These are the offspring of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, faultless in his generations; Noah walked with God.” And then, almost im...
The Torah portion Noah grapples with just that, the world after the flood. But even in this story of renewal, shadows of the past linger. The Rabbis in Bereshit Rabbah, that magnif...
The ancient rabbis certainly knew it. They saw it baked right into the words of the Torah itself. Take, for instance, the opening of Parashat Noah, the portion of Genesis that tell...
In a fascinating passage from Bereshit Rabbah, the ancient rabbinic commentary on Genesis, we find the figure of Noah held up as a source of just that: double relief. It starts wit...
A reader can imagine everyone just carrying on, oblivious, but Jewish tradition suggests otherwise. The Torah tells us, "Noah was a righteous man [ish]" (Genesis 6:9). But Bereshit...
In the book of Bereshit, Genesis, we find two such words used to describe key figures: tamim and haya. What do they really mean? , because the Rabbis of old sure had some fascinati...
