10,800 related texts · Page 205 of 225
A later midrashic legend reimagines Joab, the great general of King David, on one of his hardest campaigns. He had been hurled by the Israelites into a city called Kinsari, a forti...
When Abraham left Ur Kasdim and the idol-shops of his father Terach, he did not simply walk away. He pitched a tent, and the tent became a doorway. The rabbis imagined the scene th...
A rich man had one son. When the son turned eighteen, he begged his father for permission to travel to a famous academy. The father let him go, and three times over three years the...
The prophet Isaiah once warned Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts was about to take away the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water, the mi...
The Holy One has often worked wonders in the lives of His children at the hour of their greatest need. These miracles are recorded not for spectacle but as a brake against disbelie...
A merchant on the road was joined by an innkeeper who asked to travel with him. As they walked, they passed a blind man by the roadside. The merchant stopped, opened his purse, and...
Three young men apprenticed themselves to King Solomon for three years. When the term ended they approached the king, disappointed. They had seen wonders at court but believed they...
A man walking across a frozen field saw a snake lying stiff in the snow. Touched by pity, he picked up the creature, placed it inside his shirt against his chest, and continued on....
The midrash tells of the last days of Jerusalem under Roman siege. One of the wealthiest women of the city, Miriam the daughter of Baythus, sent her servant to buy flour for the ho...
Rabbi Ishmael was known as a master of dream-interpretation. Two students with identical dreams could come to him and walk away with opposite readings, because Ishmael understood t...
A medieval Jewish legend tells of a king of Poland who fell under the influence of a sorcerer — a wizard — and issued a decree: the Jews of his kingdom must convert, be...
The Torah gives Noah minimal construction specs. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:14) hands him a blueprint."Make thee an ark of the wood of cedars; a hundred and fifty cells s...
The Hebrew Bible plays on words: the city is called Bavel because there the Holy One confused — balal — the tongues of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:9) preserves...
Abram pitches his tent on a mountain east of Bethel, Ai on the other side, and the moment in (Genesis 12:8) almost passes without incident. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan catches the one d...
The verse is a hinge the Hebrew Bible almost hides. After the humiliation of Egypt, after Pharaoh hands Sarah back and sends the family away, (Genesis 13:3) tells us that Abram ret...
The verse in (Genesis 13:18) is the closing note of a long chapter. Abram pulls up his tent, moves south, and pitches it in the vale of Mamre at Hebron. He builds an altar.Targum P...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:17) translates a forgotten geographical name into a vivid picture. The Hebrew Bible calls the location the Valley of Shaveh, which is the King...
As the sun dipped low over the divided animals, a tardemah fell on Abraham — a deep, prophetic sleep. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 15:12 uses that sleep to show him the whole ...
Right after the terrifying vision of Gehinnom and the four kingdoms, the Lord sets a covenant. And Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 15:18 spells out the promise with an emphasis t...
At the spring in the wilderness, Hagar does something that no one in Genesis has done before. She gives God a name. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 16:13 renders her declaration ...
The Hebrew of Genesis 18:3 is famously ambiguous. Is Abraham speaking to the angels, or to God? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers with a confident rearrangement. Abraham addresses the...
At Genesis 18:30, Abraham's nerve almost breaks. "Let not the displeasure of the Lord, the Lord of all the world, wax strong against me, and I will speak." The Targum is tracking s...
"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 action shifts south. Abraham has traveled into the region of Gerar, called Sarah his sister instead of his wife, and the local king Abimelech has taken her into his household. ...
The biblical verse is blunt. Sarah tells Abraham to cast out the handmaid and her son. But in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 21:10, the Aramaic adds a sentence that changes ever...
Watch how the men of Hebron address the grieving widower. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 23:6, the Hittite elders say to Abraham: Great before the Lord art thou among us, in ...
Rivekah had only just finished her story, gold still on her hand, when her brother Laban moved. The Torah's text is brief, but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 24:30 notices the s...
This is one of the Targum's most surprising explanations. Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 25:11 asks the question the Torah leaves hanging: why, in all the final chapters of his life, d...
Of all the Targum's expansions, this one may be the darkest. Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 25:29 describes the day Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils — and tells us exactl...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens the timing of the scene to a breath. "It was when Izhak had finished blessing Jakob, and Jakob had only gone out about two handbreadths from Izh...
The wedding in Haran was not a simple celebration. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 29:22 reconstructs the conversation Laban had with the men of the town.Laban gathered all t...
Cornered, Laban made the last argument of a man who cannot let go. The children whom thou hast received of thy wives are my children, and the children whom they may bear will be re...
"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...
Jacob lifted his eyes and saw what he had feared for twenty years: Esau, and with him four hundred men of war (Genesis 33:1). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not soften the number. Fou...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan speaks plainly about what many readers would rather leave implicit (Genesis 33:2). Jacob "placed the concubines and their sons foremost." And the Targum even...
"And the sons of Jacob had come up from the field when they heard. And the men were indignant, and very violently moved, because Shekem had wrought dishonour in Israel in lying wit...
"And it was on the third day, when they were weak from the pain of their circumcision, two of the sons of Jacob, Shimeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, took each man his sword, a...
Jacob blesses his sons with a breaking voice. "God the Almighty give you mercies before the man," he prays, "that he may release to you your other brother, and Benjamin" (Genesis 4...
Pharaoh is specific about the travel arrangements. He thinks of the women. He thinks of the children. He thinks of the honor due an aged patriarch."Thou, Joseph, shalt appoint for ...
Jacob speaks. For the first time in the Targum's chapter, he is called by his second name — Israel."Israel said, Many benefits hath the Lord wrought for me; He delivered me from th...
The Torah counts seventy souls of Jacob's house entering Egypt. Do the math in (Genesis 46:27) and you find sixty-nine. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the gap with one of the st...
Pharaoh asked Jacob his age, and Jacob's answer in (Genesis 47:9) is one of the rawest sentences in Torah. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with all its weight: "The days of t...
In (Genesis 47:31), once Joseph has sworn to bury him in Canaan, Jacob does something cryptic. He "bowed himself upon the bed's head." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan pulls back the cur...
In (Genesis 48:7), as he prepares to bless his grandsons, Jacob breaks off to explain to Joseph something that has haunted the family for decades. "Rachel died by me suddenly in th...
A blessing is often remembered for what it promises. This one is remembered for what it recalls. Before Jacob spoke a single word of future over his grandsons, he spoke a word of p...
When Joseph tried to move his father's hand, the old man answered with a phrase that has echoed for centuries. "I know, my son, I know" (Genesis 48:19). The doubling is not a stamm...
It is one of the shortest verses of Jacob's farewell, and one of the most surprising. Jacob, the quiet dweller in tents, claims a city by right of conquest. "I have given to thee t...
A father can love his sons and still refuse to stand on their side. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the hardest lines in Jacob's blessing — a public disavowal. "In their co...
