The blessing Isaac pours over Jacob is compact, poetic, and nearly liturgical. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it in solemn Aramaic. "Therefore the Word of the Lord give thee of the good dews which descend from the heavens, and of the good fountains that spring up, and make the herbage of the earth to grow from beneath, and plenty of provision and wine" (Genesis 27:28).
Dew from above. Fountains from below. Grass from the soil. Grain and wine for the table. Every tier of the cosmos is enlisted.
The structure of blessing
Jewish tradition often visualizes reality as a ladder — shamayim (heavens), aretz (earth), and the waters beneath. The Targum's blessing reaches every rung. Dew comes from heaven. Fountains spring up from the waters below. Herbage grows from the earth between. Provision and wine complete the picture on Isaac's own table.
The prayer for dew — Tefillat Tal, recited on the first day of Passover in every synagogue — draws on this exact vocabulary. Pseudo-Jonathan is quietly telling us that the central agricultural prayers of the Jewish year were first spoken, in a raw form, by Isaac over his son on Pesach night.
The Word of the Lord gives
Notice the Targum's opening: the Word of the Lord give thee. Not Isaac. Not abstract fortune. The Word itself — the Memra — is the active giver. Isaac is only the channel. His mouth moves, but what flows through it is older than him.
The takeaway: a blessing well spoken calls down three worlds at once. Every time a Jew says Amen to a blessing, the Targum wants us to feel that we are standing in a tent in Beersheba, with the dew of heaven already beginning to gather on the grass outside.