686 texts in Midrash Aggadah
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:10) widens the covenant after the Flood to include every creature, without exception. With every living soul that is with you, of birds, and of...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:11) delivers the promise every frightened heart has clung to since Noah stepped off the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, and will no...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:12) introduces the idea of a sign — an ot — that will anchor the covenant through all time. This is the sign of the covenant which I establish ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:14) explains the rainbow with a detail the plain Hebrew does not supply. When I spread forth My glorious cloud over the earth, the bow shall be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:15) is a verse that has carried comfort through every Jewish generation. I will remember My covenant which is between My Word and between you a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:16) sharpens the promise one more time. The bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:17) closes the rainbow passage with a final seal. Noah is told face to face: This is the sign of the covenant that I have covenanted between My...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:20) is one of the most dreamlike details in the whole Flood cycle. Noah began to be a man working in the earth. And he found a vine which the r...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:23) captures one of the quiet, careful acts of love in Torah. After Noah has fallen asleep in the shame of the wine, Shem and Japhet took a man...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:24) adds a detail that quietly reshapes the whole story. The biblical Hebrew simply says Noah awoke and knew what his younger son had done to h...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:27) turns a brief blessing into a vision of the whole future of learning. The Lord shall beautify the borders of Japhet, and his sons shall be ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:2) does something the plain biblical list never does — it gives the sons of Japheth their addresses. Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:7) lists the sons of Kush, the son of Cham, and then spins out a gazetteer the Hebrew does not provide. Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Raam...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:9) gives us the first great villain after the Flood. He was a mighty rebel before the Lord; therefore it is said, From the day that the world ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:11) adds a twist no one reading the plain Hebrew would expect. From that land went forth Nimrod, and reigned in Athur, because he would not be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:20) closes the genealogy of Cham with a summary line that quietly announces one of Torah's deepest ideas. These are the sons of Cham, accordin...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:26) hides one of the loveliest details in the whole genealogy. Joktan begat Elmodad, who measured (or lined) the earth with lines; and Shaleph...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:32) closes the Table of Nations with a sentence that should make every reader pause. These are the houses of the sons of Noah, according to th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:1) opens the story of the Tower of Babel with a claim so bold it has echoed through Jewish thought for two thousand years. All the earth was (...
Read the verse in the Hebrew Bible and you hear only bricks and mortar. But open Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:4) — the expansive Aramaic paraphrase that fills the margins ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:6) preserves a sentence that has given interpreters trouble for centuries. God looks down at the builders of Babel and says: they will not be ...
The plain verse in (Genesis 11:7) says only, Come, let us go down. The plural has troubled readers since antiquity. To whom is God speaking? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers without ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:8) does not describe a gentle scattering. It describes a massacre. The Word of the Lord — the Memra, that favorite Targumic circumlocution for...
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...
The Hebrew Bible says simply that Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth (Genesis 11:28). One quiet sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens that sentence like a...
A genealogy in the Hebrew Bible almost always repays slow reading. The Targumist on (Genesis 11:29) drops a single clause into the list of wives and changes the whole family tree: ...
The journey that will become the spine of the Hebrew Bible begins not with Abram but with his father. In (Genesis 11:31) Terah takes his son, his grandson Lot, and his daughter-in-...
The most famous call in the Hebrew Bible lands on Abram's ear as a single imperative in (Genesis 12:1): Go forth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan slows the verse down and makes you feel eac...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:3) performs one of its most characteristic moves — it drops the future straight into the past. The plain verse says, I will bless those who bl...
The verse is almost administrative. Abram leaves Haran at seventy-five. Lot goes with him. The Targum in (Genesis 12:4) does not embroider — and that restraint is the whole lesson....
The Hebrew of (Genesis 12:5) uses a strange phrase: the souls they had made in Haran. How does one make a soul? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers in a single word that opens a whole t...
The first place Abram stops in the land of promise is Shechem. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:6) preserves a sobering detail that the Hebrew Bible states simply and the Targ...
In (Genesis 12:7) the covenant becomes architectural. The Lord appears to Abram, says To thy sons will I give this land, and Abram answers with stones. He builds an altar. Targum P...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:11) offers one of the most quietly astonishing readings in the entire Aramaic paraphrase tradition. It explains how Abram can suddenly, after ...
The plain verse in (Genesis 12:12) is a husband's anxious calculation: when the Egyptians see thee, they will say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, and thee they will keep ...
The verse in (Genesis 12:19) is Pharaoh's outburst, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens its center. Why saidst thou, She is my sister? When I would take her to me to wife, plagues ...
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 Hebrew Bible in (Genesis 13:7) says only that there was strife between the shepherds. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells you what the strife was about, and the answer is an ethics le...
The verse in (Genesis 13:10) says Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the plain of the Jordan, well-watered, lush, an earthly paradise. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan pierces that pastoral scen...
The Hebrew Bible in (Genesis 13:13) says simply that the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against the Lord, exceedingly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses that generality. The Ara...
The Hebrew Bible in (Genesis 13:14) times the divine address with surgical precision: after that Lot had separated from him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the clause verbatim be...
The promise in (Genesis 13:16) has a strange choice of image. God does not tell Abram his children will be like stars or like sand. Those images come later. Here the promise is as ...
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 ...
A roster of kings is usually a place where readers skim. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:2) will not let you skim. It reads the names. The Aramaic treats each royal name as a...
A geographical footnote in (Genesis 14:3) becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, a small elegy. The Aramaic renders the location as the vale of the gardens (paredesaia), the place tha...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:5) turns a military roll call into a tour of the archaic world's titans. Kedarlaomer's coalition sweeps through the land and smites three peop...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:6) adds a single parenthetical that rewrites a whole people's identity: the Choraee (dwellers in caverns) who were in the high mountains of Ge...
