3,765 related texts · 59 related myths · Page 1 of 79
Abimelech ruled over Israel for three years (Judges 9:22). Aggadat Bereshit uses this strange opening, about a king in the book of Judges, to arrive at the first murder. The path r...
After the conquest of Canaan, God deliberately left certain nations in the land, not because He couldn't remove them, but to test Israel (Judges 3:1-2). The rabbis found this pract...
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...
Hannah was barren for years. Her husband loved her and her rival taunted her and the priest Eli misread her prayer as drunkenness. The whole story is about a woman whose deepest lo...
King David was sick and bedridden for thirteen years. His enemies waited. "When will he die and his name perish?" (Psalm 41:6). The midrash reports that seven sheep were laid besid...
Evening falls over Sedom, and two angels arrive. The Hebrew of (Genesis 19:1) says Lot was sitting "in the gate of Sedom." The Targum catches a detail the plain reading hides. "Two...
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...
When Israel does the will of the Almighty, they rise like ministering angels. This is Aggadat Bereshit's boldest claim about obedience, not that it earns reward, but that it transf...
Sometimes the purest image of divine mercy in Torah is also the most embarrassing. (Genesis 19:16) in the Targum reads this way. "But he delayed: and the men laid hold on his hand,...
At the end of days, the prophet Malachi says, you will be able to tell the righteous from the wicked at a glance: "You shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked...
The moment they clear the gates of Sedom, the angelic pair splits. (Genesis 19:17), in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, makes the division of labor unmistakable. "And it was that as they le...
The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah definitely fits that bill. It's a story of hospitality gone wrong, moral decay, and divine retribution that leaves you breathless. It all starts with...
"Turn now hither," Lot says to the two angels, "and enter the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet" (Genesis 19:2). The angels refuse. "No; for in the street we wil...
The Hebrew Bible says Abraham named the site of the Binding "God will see" (Adonai Yireh) (Genesis 22:14). Targum Onkelos expands this into a full theological statement: "Abraham w...
After Abraham had sent his son Ishmael away to live with his mother Hagar, Ishmael settled in the wilderness and married a Moabite wife. Years passed. Abraham wanted to see how his...
The Hebrew says simply that Sarah was listening at the tent door. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:10) puts a second listener behind her. And Sarah was hearkening at the door ...
Three days after his circumcision at age ninety-nine, Abraham sat in pain at the entrance of his tent. (Genesis 18:1-2) describes what happened next in language so compressed it hi...
Lot continues his nervous negotiation in (Genesis 19:20). "Behold, now, I pray, this city, it is a near habitation, and convenient to escape thither; and it is small, and the guilt...
The door is about to break. The mob is surging forward. And then (Genesis 19:11), in the Targum's rendering, becomes the moment the heavens intervene directly. "But the men who wer...
The sky is beginning to lighten. The judgment is scheduled for sunrise. (Genesis 19:15) finds the angels pleading with a man who cannot quite make himself move. "And at the time th...
Sarah laughed when the angels told her she would bear a son. She was ninety years old. Abraham was a hundred. The idea was absurd. And yet Isaac was born, and his very name, Yitzch...
Rabbi Bana'ah taught that God split the Red Sea for the Israelites in the merit of their ancestor Abraham. The proof lies in a striking verbal parallel between two verses. When Abr...
The midrash on Abraham's hospitality in Genesis 18 notices something small and opens it into a whole theology. The patriarch had just made a covenant with the peoples of the land. ...
The three travelers had finished their meal under the terebinths. They rose, and the Targum watches them split off into three different errands. The one who had come to announce a ...
The angels turn. They set their faces toward Sedom. And the Targum on (Genesis 18:22) pauses to tell us what Abraham does in that moment: he "supplicated mercy for Lot, and ministe...
This is the most astonishing verse in the Akeidah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:10), Isaac is the one who speaks. He does not beg. He does not flee. He instructs his fa...
"These are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham; Abraham begot Isaac" (Genesis 25:19). The verse says it twice, and the rabbis asked why. Their answer: to show that the gift gi...
Zechariah saw a horseman in a vision of the night (Zechariah 1:8). The rabbis identified this figure as the prince of Edom, the heavenly guardian angel of the nation that had ruled...
The opening of Parashat Vayera, "And God appeared to him at the terebinths of Mamre" (Genesis 18:1), seems straightforward. Abraham is sitting at his tent, and God appears. But Reb...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:2) gives the three visitors at Abraham's tent their heavenly job descriptions. They are angels in the likeness of men, the Targum says, and th...
Something strange happens at the end of the Akeidah. The Torah says Abraham returns to his young men. But does not mention Isaac returning with him. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (G...
The story of Lot, Abraham's nephew, gives us a masterclass in hospitality gone wrong. The familiar version gives us the basics: God, displeased with the wickedness of Sodom, sends ...
Four "harnessed" with joy: Abraham, (Genesis 22:3) "And Abraham rose early in the morning (for the binding of Isaac), and he saddled his ass." Now did he not have many servants?, (...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:17) is the mirror image of Sarah's later laugh at the tent door. Abraham falls on his face. He does not argue out loud. He laughs, wondered, t...
Lot's arc is almost done. (Genesis 19:30) places him, finally, where the angel originally told him to go in (Genesis 19:17), the mountain. "And Lot went up from Zoar, and dwelt in ...
(Genesis 19:29) gives the whole Sodom episode its underlying machinery in a single sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it plainly. "And it was when the Lord destroyed the c...
The Hebrew of (Genesis 18:20) says only that the outcry of Sedom and Amorah is great and their sin very heavy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan will not leave that vague. It hands us, in Ara...
(Exodus, Ibid. 21) "And the L–rd went before them by day": We are hereby taught that as one metes it out to others, so is it meted out to him. Abraham accompanied the ministering a...
The Hebrew Bible says God "appeared" to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18:1). Targum Onkelos says God "became revealed." It sounds like the same thing. It is not. Appearing ...
(Genesis 18:8) contains one of the Torah's most curious moments, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with an almost comic precision. Abraham takes rich cream, milk, and the calf ...
(Genesis 19:3) has one of the most charming details in all of Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan doubles down on it. "And he persuaded them earnestly, and they turned aside to be wi...
The Torah says Abraham took two of his young men. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:3) names them: Eliezer, the faithful servant, and Ishmael, the firstborn son whom Abr...
Book of Jasher turns to Three Angels Visit Abraham Before Sodom's Doom. The tradition turns to the Book of Jasher. Now, this isn't part of the canonical Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. I...
Legends of the Jews turns to Isaac and the Angels of Abraham. Abraham, on his way home with a mysterious stranger, hears a voice coming from a tree. Not just any voice, but one pro...
Some verses in Torah are hard to carry, and (Genesis 19:8) is one of them. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it without softening. "Behold, now, I have two daughters who have had n...
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...
There is a quiet line in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:17) that changes how you read the whole Sodom episode. God speaks, as the Targum puts it, bememra, with His Word. And...
Picture the king of Gerar standing before the stranger who had walked into his court with a wife he called a sister. Abimelech is not shouting. He is stunned. In Targum Pseudo-Jona...
