11,062 related texts · 38 related myths · Page 1 of 231
(Job 5:19) promises: "From six woes He shall save you, and in the seventh, evil shall not reach you." The midrash asks which six woes. And Solomon in Proverbs provides the list: "S...
Jacob said: "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my justice has passed away from my God" (Isaiah 40:27). This was Israel speaking, the whole nation's complaint condensed into one v...
"Do not be hasty with your words, and let your heart not rush to bring a matter before God" (Ecclesiastes 5:1). Jacob had said: "My way is hidden from the Lord." The rabbis found t...
Joseph, eleventh son of Jacob, beloved of Rachel, was about to die. He called his sons and brethren together and spoke. "My brethren and my children, hearken to Joseph the beloved ...
Zebulun, sixth son of Jacob and Leah, was dying in his hundred and fourteenth year, two years after Joseph. He gathered his sons and said: "I am not conscious that I have sinned al...
There is nothing more beloved than the Mincha prayer. The afternoon offering, the one between the morning and the evening, is the prayer that comes at the moment when the day is st...
Genesis 38 opens with a strange, almost intrusive line: and Judah went down from his brothers. The Torah does not explain. The story of Joseph is unfolding dramatically, and sudden...
The instant they bowed, he remembered. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:9) reports it without fanfare: "Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed of them." The sheaves and t...
It’s a story of family betrayal, simmering rage, and, ultimately, a hard-won path to self-control. The drama unfolds like this: the brothers are out tending the flocks. Joseph, the...
The principle that a dream follows its interpretation is not an abstraction. The Talmud in Berakhot 55b demonstrates it through the life of Joseph. And through a hard rule about ti...
They volunteered the family arithmetic before he asked for it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:13) preserves their confession: twelve brothers, one youngest still with the fa...
"Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob" (Jeremiah 2:4). Not the word of Jeremiah. Not the word of the priesthood. The word of the Lord, direct, unmediated, demanding attentio...
The story of Joseph, sold into slavery, gives us a dramatic answer. "The Medanites sold him to Egypt, to Potifar, an official of Pharaoh, the chief executioner" (Genesis 37:36). Bu...
The story of Joseph and his brothers is a perfect example, a tale brimming with jealousy, betrayal, and divine intervention. The scene: the brothers, consumed by envy, have just ca...
Twenty pounds of silver. That was the price of a human life, the amount Joseph's own brothers accepted from a passing caravan of Ishmaelite merchants in exchange for their seventee...
The Torah tells us Reuben came back to the pit, found it empty, and tore his clothes. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:29) answers the question readers have always wanted to a...
The Torah is brisk: Joseph found favour in his eyes, and he served him, and he appointed him superintendent over his house, and all that he had he delivered in his hands (Genesis 3...
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,...
When the brothers decided to kill Joseph, Reuben stepped in. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:22) makes his motive explicit: because he would deliver him from their hand, and ...
The biblical text says only that Potiphar was furious and imprisoned Joseph. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us something remarkable the Hebrew leaves unstated. Joseph's master to...
Simeon, second son of Jacob and Leah, was dying in his hundred and twentieth year. Joseph his brother had already passed. When his sons came to visit, Simeon strengthened himself, ...
Legends of the Jews turns to The Butler and Baker Had Intertwined Dreams in Prison. Being locked away, day in and day out. Now picture this: the chief butler and the chief baker, c...
The Torah itself doesn't dwell on it. But the ancient rabbis, they loved to fill in the gaps, to imagine the "what ifs" and the "how comes" of our sacred stories. And in Pirkei DeR...
After years of slavery in Egypt, orchestrated by his own brothers’ jealousy, Joseph rose to become second-in-command to Pharaoh. When famine struck, who should come begging for foo...
This is the most dramatic verse in the whole chapter, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacted in Eretz Yisrael in the early common era) has pulled the curtain all the way back. Ta...
Take the story of Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brothers. The familiar story is this:. Jealousy, betrayal, a coat of many colors… but what about the aftermath? (Genesis 37:2...
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 catches a small pastoral detail. Joseph asked the chiefs of Pharoh who were with him in the custody of his master's house, saying, Why is the look of your faces more evi...
He was dealing with some serious public relations fallout, you see. Accusations were flying, thanks to his master's wife, and the people just couldn't stop gossiping. God, in His i...
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...
Our story comes from Bereshit Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah), a classical Rabbinic text that intricately interprets the Book of Genesis. The chief baker, seeing Joseph's successful interp...
"Behold, God will not cast away the perfect, neither will He uphold the evildoers" (Job 8:20). God visited Sarah and she conceived (Genesis 21:1), after decades of barrenness, afte...
You're reading one story, and suddenly – BAM! – It can feel a little jarring. Well, the ancient Rabbis noticed this too, and they dove deep into those textual "interruptions" to fi...
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 bio...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:18) lingers over three words: from afar. The brothers saw Joseph in the distance, long before he arrived. They had time. They had distance. An...
The brothers had to produce evidence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:31) explains their choice of weapon-of-deception with clinical precision: they killed a kid of the goats...
The Targum closes the chapter with a line that the Sages read as the key to the whole Joseph narrative. It was not needful for the captain of the prison to watch Joseph, after the ...
How can someone recognize his brothers if they cannot recognize him? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:8) answers with a very physical explanation: the beard. The mathematics o...
After the test, the quiet kindness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:25) describes Joseph's instructions: fill their vehicles with grain, return each man's money to his sack, ...
First, a misstep. Before we get to the wedding bells, understand: Judah was kind of a big deal. He was, according to some traditions, essentially the king among his brothers. But a...
The kisses Joseph gives his brothers are not only affection. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's reading, they are grief in advance. "And he kissed all his brethren, and wept over them, be...
Book of Jubilees turns to Joseph Interprets Dreams in Pharaoh's Dungeon. Jubilees 40, and its take on the Joseph story. You remember Joseph. Sold into slavery by his brothers, he r...
The familiar version gives us the broad strokes from the Torah: jealous brothers, a pit, some traders, and boom – he's in Potiphar's house. But the details… oh, the details are whe...
That’s kind of what happens in this little scene from Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews, and it’s absolutely fascinating. The setup: Joseph, now a powerful figure in Egypt, has finall...
"Jacob settled in the land where his father sojourned" (Genesis 37:1). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev opens his commentary on the Joseph story by explaining why Jacob lived in a...
Why was the Temple, the dwelling place of the Divine Presence on earth, built specifically on the tribal territory of Benjamin? The Mekhilta provides two remarkable reasons, both r...
The butler and baker give Joseph the standard complaint of prisoners in an ancient city. They have dreamed, and there is no court interpreter available in their cell. The Targum pr...
It's one of those ancient Jewish texts, considered apocryphal (meaning not part of the official canon) by some, but absolutely brimming with fascinating details and expansions on t...
