686 texts in Midrash Aggadah
The Torah lists the kings of Edom in a dry procession: Bela died, Jobab reigned, Jobab died, Husham reigned, and so on. It is one of those passages readers tend to skim. But Targum...
The Torah closes its long list of Edomite chieftains with two final names: Magdiel and Iram. For most readers, they are just names. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 36:43) pauses...
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 b...
The Torah says the brothers hated Joseph and could not speak a word of peace to him (Genesis 37:4). Readers sometimes take this as a character flaw — petty brothers who refused to ...
It is one of the most famous dreams in the Hebrew Bible, and the Targum translates it with surgical calm. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:7) repeats the imagery almost unchan...
The brothers heard the dream and exploded. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:8) preserves their two-edged outrage in a single tight sentence. They did not just laugh at Joseph....
If the sheaf dream was shocking, the second dream was worse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:9) stays close to the Hebrew: behold, the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars, bo...
When Joseph told his father the dream of the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, Jacob rebuked him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:10) reports the rebuke: What dream is thi...
When Jacob sent Joseph to check on his brothers in Shechem, the Torah gives no reason for the trip other than routine concern. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:13) reveals a f...
The Torah says Jacob sent Joseph from the Valley of Hebron. The word valley — emek — also means depth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:14) pounces on the double meaning. Jaco...
In the field outside Shechem, Joseph meets a man who tells him his brothers have moved on to Dothan. The Torah calls him simply a man. The sages identified him as the angel Gabriel...
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 conspiracy speech of Joseph's brothers, preserved in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:20), ends with a sentence that is, in its own dark way, one of the most revealing lin...
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 ...
After the brothers threw Joseph into the pit, they sat down to eat. Then they looked up and saw a caravan. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:25) gives the caravan an unexpected...
How much is a brother worth? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:28) gives the answer with almost unbearable precision. The Midianite traders pulled Joseph out of the pit and sol...
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 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...
Ten brothers conspired. Ten brothers sold Joseph. Ten brothers dipped the coat in goat's blood. But when it came time to actually bring the coat to their father, Targum Pseudo-Jona...
The moment Jacob examines the bloody coat, something astonishing happens. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:33) gives us a line that reshapes the whole Joseph narrative. Jacob ...
The Torah says Jacob refused to be comforted and declared he would go down to the grave mourning. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:35) adds a heartbreaking line the Hebrew onl...
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 Torah says Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. Readers have wondered for centuries: evil in what way? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Gen...
When Er died, the custom of yibbum — levirate marriage — required his brother Onan to marry Tamar and father a child who would legally carry Er's name and inherit Er's portion. The...
After losing two sons, Judah faced a choice. The custom required his third and last surviving son, Shelah, to marry Tamar and try to raise up the line. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (G...
The Targum sees Tamar at a moment of ruined expectation. Judah had promised her his youngest son, Shelah, after her two husbands had died in sequence. She waited. She waited longer...
The verse is brief and the Targum does not soften it. Judah turned aside to the veiled woman at the crossroads and said, Let me now go in with thee, for he knew not that she was hi...
The Targum names them precisely: thy seal, and thy mantle, and thy staff which is in thy hand (Genesis 38:18). Tamar did not ask for silver. She asked for the three objects a man o...
The Targum reports the sentence bluntly. Three months after the crossroads, Tamar was known to be with child. The news traveled to Judah, and the Aramaic adds a telling gloss: Is s...
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...
The Aramaic preserves two small words that change a life. Judah, standing at the place of judgment with his own seal, mantle, and staff in front of him, does not argue. He says: Tz...
The midwife does something quick and symbolic. As Tamar's twins are being born, one child stretches out a hand from the womb, and the midwife binds it with a scarlet thread, saying...
The second twin pushes his way out ahead of the first, and Tamar — or, in some readings, the midwife — speaks words that the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears as prophecy. With what gre...
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's gloss here is theologically sharp. From the time he appointed him superintendent over his house, and over all that he had, the Lord prospered the house of the Mizraite...
The Targum reports the architecture of the household plainly. Potiphar left all that he had in Joseph's hand, and took no knowledge of anything of his, except his wife with whom he...
The Aramaic gives Joseph's answer as a careful, almost bureaucratic list. Behold, my master taketh no knowledge of what is with me in the house, and all he hath he delivereth into ...
Joseph reaches the real wall. There is none in the house greater than I, nor hath he restricted me from anything but thyself, because thou art his wife: and how can I do this great...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line the Torah does not spell out and that the Sages treasured. And it was when she spake with Joseph this day and the next, and he hearkened not ...
When Joseph flees, leaving his garment in her hand (Genesis 39:12), Potiphar's wife does not sit in silence. The Targum reports her pivot: she called the men of the house and said,...
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...
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 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 ...
The Targum preserves a grammatical peculiarity that the Sages loved. They dreamed a dream, both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man his own dream, and the interpreta...
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...
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...
This is one of the most daring glosses in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The chief butler has told Joseph about a vine with three branches, ripening into grapes that he pressed into Phara...
Joseph's promise to the butler is both specific and ordinary. At the end of three days the memory of thee will come before Pharoh and he will lift up thy head with honour, and rest...
