510 texts in Midrash Aggadah
How did the Ten Words arrive? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes it with cosmic theatre. "The first word, as it came forth from the mouth of the Holy One, whose Name be blessed, ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes each commandment at Sinai the same way — as a living body of fire. The second word traveled exactly as the first. "Like storms, and lightnings,...
The commandment against idols is sweeping in a way that startles when you slow down and read it carefully. "You shall not make to yourselves image or figure, or any similitude of w...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders one of the most unsettling lines of the Decalogue with full theological weight. "You shall not bow down to them, or worship before them; for I th...
The commandment against taking God's name in vain is often read as a rule about cursing. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sees something far more grave. "My people of the house of Israel...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the Sabbath commandment with a widening circle. "But the seventh day is for rest and quietude before the Lord your God: you shall not perform any...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan grounds the Sabbath in cosmology. "For in six days the Lord created the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and whatever is therein, and rested on the s...
The fifth commandment carries a promise most commandments do not. "My people, the house of Israel, Let every man be instructed in the honour of his father and in the honour of his ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the four short commandments of the second tablet and expands each into a thundering sermon. Every prohibition ends with a cosmic consequence — not ...
The tenth commandment looks mild next to murder and theft. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan will not let it stay mild. "Sons of Israel My people, Ye shall not be covetous companions or p...
What does it mean to see a sound? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the strange Hebrew phrase and leans into the miracle. "And all the people saw the thunders, and were turned back,...
After the thunder and the twelve-mile retreat, the people beg Moses to speak to them instead of God. And Moses answers with a line that still echoes. "Fear not; for the glory of th...
The Targumic rendering of the prohibition against images goes further than the Hebrew — and further than most readers notice. "Sons of Israel, My people, you shall not make, that y...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the simple altar law a mystical interior. "An altar of earth ye shall make to My Name, and sacrifice upon it thy burnt offerings and thy sanctified...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest laws in the Torah. "If thou wilt make an altar of stones unto My Name, thou shalt not build them sculptured; for if thou l...
The last verse of the Decalogue's aftermath contains a detail about priestly decency. "And you, the priests, who stand to minister before Me, shall not ascend to My altar by steps,...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens the civil law section of Exodus with an astonishing clarification. "If thou shalt have bought a son of Israel, on account of his theft, six years h...
One of the strangest rituals in the civil law is the piercing of a servant's ear. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with bureaucratic precision. "His master shall bring him bef...
Among the harder laws of Exodus is the case of the amah ivriyah — the young Hebrew maidservant. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the verse its full protective force. "If these thre...
The ancient world knew the right of sanctuary. A murderer who reached a temple's altar could cling to the horns of the altar and claim divine protection. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan spells out one of the most practical laws in the Torah — what a man owes his victim when the victim does not die. "If he rise again from his illness, and...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a heartbreaking case from the civil code. "If men when striving strike a woman with child, and cause her to miscarry, but not to lose her life, t...
The goring ox is one of the oldest cases in legal literature — it appears in Hammurabi's code from the 18th century BCE — but the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the Torah's version...
One of the most interpretively rich laws in the Torah is the difference between stealing an ox and stealing a sheep. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not leave the puzzle unsolved. ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan transforms a cryptic self-defense law into a piece of moral clarity. "If the thing be as clear as the sun that he was not entering to destroy life, and o...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a tight principle of agricultural damages. "If a man break in upon a field or a vineyard, and send in his beast to feed in another man's field, t...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the law of entrusted property with precise legal architecture. "If the thief be found, he shall restore two for one. If the thief be not found, t...
Here is a case without witnesses. A neighbor entrusts an animal or a vessel to another, and the thing disappears. No thief is caught. No one can say what happened. Only two people ...
A shepherd watches over a borrowed flock. One day a lion drops out of the hills, or a wolf from the hedges, and by the time the shepherd reaches the scene, the animal is torn to pi...
You borrow your neighbor's tool. It breaks in your hands. Or you borrow his ox, and the animal dies while under your watch. Who swallows the loss? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus ...
A young woman has been seduced. Her future, by the standards of the ancient world, has been altered against her will — and often against her knowledge of what was being taken. What...
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...
There is a kind of cruelty that is not visible in the moment. It lives in a tone of voice. A dismissive glance. A pressing of advantage against someone who has no one to defend him...
There is a warning at the heart of the covenant that has nothing to do with courts. It has to do with a woman weeping in a small room, and a child watching her weep, and no one els...
There is a moment when a poor person walks up to a wealthier neighbor and asks for a loan. The wealthier neighbor has a choice. He can treat the moment as a market opportunity. Or ...
A lender holds collateral. The borrower is poor enough that his only pledge was the cloak on his back. Evening comes. The air cools. What does the Torah require? Targum Pseudo-Jona...
The harvest is in. The grapes are crushed. The wine has just begun to settle in its jars. The farmer stands over his abundance and feels the old pull of hesitation. Perhaps next we...
A calf is born. A lamb is born. The farmer knows this one is destined for the altar — a firstborn male, dedicated to God from its first breath. What happens in the interval between...
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...
A man walks up to you in the market with a story. His neighbor, he says, has wronged him. He needs someone to stand with him at the gate, to nod when he speaks, to lend weight to h...
The courtroom fills. The elders have been talking. A consensus is forming. You are the last voice, and you can see which way the wind blows. The majority has already chosen its ver...
This verse is among the strangest in the Torah, because it seems to contradict everything else the Torah says about the poor. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:3) is blun...
You are walking along a road. Across the field you see an ox. It is the ox of a man you cannot stand. You know, privately, he has done wicked things. Your dislike is not petty — it...
The ox that wanders free was one thing. This case is harder. The donkey has collapsed under its load. Its owner — a man you dislike for good reason — is struggling to lift it. And ...
A court hands down its verdict. A man is acquitted. He walks free. And then, after the gavel has fallen, new evidence surfaces — evidence that proves he was guilty all along. Or th...
The gift arrives quietly. A gesture of friendship, perhaps. A token. The judge tells himself he can take it without being influenced. He is a man of integrity. He has ruled fairly ...
Six years you plow. Six years you harvest. Six years you measure the field by what it produces for you. Then the seventh year arrives — and the ledger flips. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
It would have been enough to say: rest on the seventh day. That alone would have been a radical gift in the ancient world. But the Torah cannot stop there. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan o...
