The Hebrew Bible says God "blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Targum Onkelos renders that final phrase differently: man became a "speaking soul." One word changes everything.
In the Hebrew, Adam is a living creature—nefesh (the vital soul) chayyah—the same phrase used for animals elsewhere in Genesis. But Onkelos elevates humanity above the animal kingdom with a single Aramaic word. A human being is not merely alive. A human being speaks. Language, reason, the capacity to name and define reality—this is what separates the human from every other creature God formed from the same dust.
This translation choice echoes through the rest of the chapter. When God brings every animal to Adam "to see what he would call them," the act of naming is not a trivial exercise. It is the defining human power—the very capacity that makes Adam a "speaking soul." Whatever Adam called each creature, "that is its name." Naming is not arbitrary labeling. It is perceiving essence.
Onkelos also subtly adjusts the Tree of Knowledge. The Hebrew calls it the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." Onkelos renders it as the tree "from which the fruit, if eaten, gives knowledge of what is good and what is evil." The tree itself is not knowledge. The tree is a mechanism. The knowledge comes through the act of eating—through human choice and its consequences.
Throughout Genesis 2, Onkelos walks a careful line: staying close enough to the Hebrew to be recognizable, diverging just enough to teach. Every departure is a theological lesson in miniature.
1. And the heavens and the earth and all their host were completed.
2. And the Lord finished in the Seventh Day His work which He had wrought, and rested in the Seventh Day from all His work which He had wrought.
3. And the Lord blessed the Seventh Day and made it holy, because in it He rested from all His work which the Lord had created to make.
4. These are the memorials of the heavens and the earth, when they were created in the day when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5. And all trees of the field were not yet in the earth, and every herb of the field had not yet sprung up, because the Lord God had not caused rain to come upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
6. And a mist ascended from the earth, and moistened all the face of the ground.
7. And the Lord God created Adam from dust of the ground, and breathed upon his face the breath of lives, and it became in Adam a Discoursing Spirit.
8. And the Lord God planted a garden in a region of pleasantness in the time of the beginning, and He made to dwell there the man whom He had created.
9. And the Lord God caused to grow from the earth every tree desirable to look upon, and good for food, and the Tree of Life (Lives) in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of whose fruit they who eat know between good and evil.
10. And a river went forth from Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was divided and became four heads of rivers (or four chief rivers).
11. The name of the first is Pishon, that which encompasseth all the land of Havilah, where is gold;
12. and the gold of that land is good; there is bedalcha and Burilla stones.
13. And the name of the second river is Gichon, which encompasseth all the land of Kush.
14. And the name of the third river is Digelatlh, which goeth to the east of Athur. And the fourth river is Pherat.
15. And the Lord God took Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden to culture it and keep it.
16. And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, Of every tree of the garden eating thou mayest eat;
17. but of the tree of whose fruit they who eat know between good and evil thou shalt not eat; for in the day that thou eatest of it dying thou shalt die.
18. And the Lord God said, It is not right that Adam should be solitary; I will make for him a helper as for his sake (or, as suited to him: Heb., \it kenegdo\it*, as his counterpart).
19. And the Lord God created from the earth every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call him; and every (name by) which Adam called the living animal, that was its name.
20. And Adam called the name of all cattle, and of the fowl of the heaven, and of every beast of the field; but to Adam was not found a helper as for him.
21. And the Lord God threw a sleep upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and filled with flesh in place thereof;
22. and the Lord God builded the rib which He took from Adam into Woman, and He brought her unto Adam.
23. And Adam said, This now (this time) is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Woman, because from her husband this was taken.
24. Therefore shall a man forsake the couch (\it beth mishkeb\it*, the sleeping-house) of his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be of one flesh.
25. And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.
