686 texts in Midrash Aggadah
As Jakob prepared his message to Esau, he did something strange. He instructed his servants to announce that the great blessing stolen years before had, in effect, come to nothing....
The messengers returned with the news every fleeing brother dreads. We came to thy brother, to Esau, and he also cometh to meet thee, and four hundred chief-warriors with him (Gene...
Here is why Jakob's fear was so great. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the reason the plain Hebrew only hints at: he was greatly afraid, because for twenty years he had not been mindf...
The moment Jacob heard that Esau was coming with four hundred armed men, he did what his grandfather and father had done before him: he prayed. But notice the opening he chose. He ...
"Save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him." Jacob's plea in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:12) names two things most ancient prayers leave imp...
"But You promised." This is the hinge of Jacob's prayer in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:13). After naming his fears, after invoking his fathers, after shrinking himself into ...
Jacob was a strategist, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the tactical cleverness of his gift to Esau (Genesis 32:17). He did not send one large herd. He sent flock after flock,...
Jacob knew Esau would ask three questions, so he wrote the answers in advance. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the briefing given to the first servant in the caravan (Genesis 32:1...
"According to these words you must speak with Esau when you find him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the instruction three times (Genesis 32:20) — first servant, second servant, t...
"I will make his countenance friendly by the gift which goes before me, and afterward I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's priv...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest accounts in all of Jewish tradition (Genesis 32:25). Jacob was left alone across the Jabbok, and an angel wrestled him in the ...
"And he saw that he had not power to hurt him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:26) pauses to notice something the plain verse whispers but does not say outright: the angel lost...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the wrestling angel a confession that the plain text never imagined (Genesis 32:27). When dawn came, the angel pleaded: "Let me go, for the column of t...
"Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line the plain text only implies (Genesis 32:29): the new name was given "because you are magni...
"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...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws — the prohibition aga...
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 he himself went over before them, praying and asking mercy before the Lord; and he bowed upon the earth seven times, until he met with his brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ge...
"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they wept." In the plain Torah text, this is a moment of pure reconciliation. Targum Pseudo-...
Esau looked at the caravan and asked the question any returning brother might ask: "Who are these with you?" (Genesis 33:5). In the plain text Jacob answers simply, "the children w...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a small, piercing detail from the moment the family bowed before Esau (Genesis 33:7). The handmaids and their children came forward. Leah and her c...
"I have seen the look of your face, and it is to me as the vision of the face of your angel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's most startling line to his brother (Genesis 3...
"Receive now the present which is brought to you, because it has been given me through mercy from before the Lord." Jacob's insistence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 33:11) res...
Esau offered to travel alongside Jacob, and Jacob declined. The reason he gave, preserved in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 33:13), sounds like a note from a shepherd's almanac. "...
"I will lead on quietly alone, according to the foot of the work which is before me, and according to the foot of the instruction of the children; until the time that I come to my ...
"And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and sojourned there the twelve months of the year; and he built in it a midrasha, and for his flocks he made booths; therefore he called the name o...
"Then Jacob came in peace with all that he had to the city of Shekem, in the land of Canaan, in his coming from Padan Aram; and he dwelt near the city." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gen...
"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...
Hamor and his son Shekem needed to convince the men of their city to undergo mass circumcision — an extraordinary demand. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:21) preserves the sales...
"And all they who came out of the gate of his city received from Hamor and from Shekem, his son; and they circumcised every male, all who came out of the gate of the city." Targum ...
"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...
"You have made my name to go forth as evil among the inhabitants of the land, among the Kenaanites and Phezerites. And I am a people of small number, and they will gather together ...
Simeon and Levi answered their father Jacob with a question that has rung through every generation since. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:31) gives them a longer speech than the...
"Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar unto Eloha, who revealed Himself to you in your flight from before Esau your brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gene...
"Put away the idols of the peoples which are among you, which you took from the temple of Shekem, and purify you from the uncleannesses of the slain whom you have, and change your ...
"We will arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto Eloha, who heard my prayer in the day when I was afflicted, and whose Memra was my helper in the way that I ...
"And they delivered into Jacob's hand all the idols of the people which were in their hands, which they had taken from the temple of Shekem, and the jewels that had been in the ear...
"And they journeyed from thence, offering praise and prayer before the Lord. And there was a tremor from before the Lord upon the people of the cities round about them, and they pu...
"And he built there an altar, and named that place, To God, who made His Shekhinah to dwell in Bethel, because there had been revealed to him the angels of the Lord, in his flight ...
"And Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca, died, and was buried below Bethel, in the field of the plain. And there it was told Jacob concerning the death of Rebecca his mother; and he cal...
"And the Lord revealed Himself to Jacob again on his return from Padan of Aram, and the Lord blessed him by the name of His Memra, after the death of his mother." Targum Pseudo-Jon...
When Jacob returned to Bethel — the very stones where he had dreamed of the ladder decades earlier — he did not simply set up a marker and move on. He raised a pillar of stone on t...
After burying Rachel on the road to Ephrath, Jacob kept walking. He pitched his tent in a quiet, unremarkable place — Migdal Eder, the Tower of the Flock, a shepherd's watchtower o...
The Torah gives us one sentence, and it is a scandal: Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine (Genesis 35:22). The sages could not bear to leave it there. Reuben was...
The Torah says simply that Esau took his wives, his sons, his flocks, and moved to another land. It sounds like a practical decision — too many cattle, not enough grass. The verse ...
One verse can hide two entire storylines. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 36:12) takes a bare genealogical note and cracks it open to reveal both. The Torah tells us that Timna ...
The Torah drops a cryptic detail in the middle of an Edomite genealogy: this is Anah who found the yemim in the wilderness. For two thousand years, readers have argued about what y...
