The Torah's promise of return from exile in (Deuteronomy 30) is hopeful. Targum Jonathan makes it messianic. Where the Hebrew says God will gather the scattered, the Targum says: "from thence will the Word of the Lord gather you together by the hand of Elijah the great priest, and from thence will He bring you by the hand of the King Meshiha." Two figures—Elijah and the Messiah—are named as the agents of the final ingathering. Neither appears in the Torah's text. The Targum inserts them as if they were always meant to be there.
Repentance itself gets a physical destination. The prayers of the righteous "shall come up unto the glorious throne of the Lord your God." Repentance is not an abstract emotional state—it travels upward and arrives at a specific location in heaven. And God does not merely accept it; "His Word will accept your repentance with favour."
The circumcision of the heart receives a cosmic rewrite. The Torah says God will circumcise your heart. The Targum says: "He will take away the foolishness of your heart, and of your children's heart; for He will abolish evil desire from the world, and create good desire." This is not individual transformation. This is the elimination of the yetzer hara (יצר הרע), the evil inclination, from all of creation. God will fundamentally redesign human nature.
The famous passage about the Torah being "not in heaven" gets grounded in daily practice. "The word is nigh you, in your schools; open your mouth, that you may meditate on it; purify your hearts, that you may perform it." The Targum places Torah study in the beit midrash, the study hall, not in some mystical location. And the choice between life and death becomes explicitly about two worlds: "Choose therefore the way of life, even the law, that you and your children may live the life of the world to come." The stakes are not just survival in this world but existence in the next.
And it will be, when all these words of blessings, or their contraries, which I have set in order before you shall have come upon you, you will be converted in your hearts to return unto My fear, in all the dispersions (among) the nations where the Lord will have scattered you.
The upright of you will be favoured with a blessed repentance; and though you have sinned, yet shall your repentance come up unto the glorious throne of the Lord your God, if you will hearken to His Word according to all that I have commanded you this day, you, and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul.
And His Word will accept your repentance with favour, and will have mercy upon you, and He will gather you again from all the nations whither the Lord your God had scattered you.
Though you may be dispersed unto the ends of the heavens, from thence will the Word of the Lord gather you together by the hand of Elijah the great priest, and from thence will He bring you by the hand of the King Meshiha.
And the Word of the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed by inheritance, and you shall possess it, and He will bless you and increase you more than your fathers.
And the Lord your God will take away the foolishness of your heart, and of your children’s heart; for He will abolish evil desire from the world, and create good desire, which will give you the dictate to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, that your lives may flow on for evermore.
And the Word of the Lord your God will send these curses upon your enemies who have oppressed you in your captivities, and such as have hated and persecuted, to destroy you.
But you shall return, and be obedient to the Word of the Lord, and do all His commandments that I command you this day.
And the Lord your God will make you to abound in good; for you shall prosper in all the works of your hands, in the offspring of thy womb, the increase of thy cattle, and the produce of your land, for good; for the Word of the Lord will return, to rejoice over you, to bless you, as He rejoiced over your fathers,
if you will hearken to the Word of the Lord your God in keeping His commandments and statutes which are written in the book of this law, when you have returned to the fear of the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
For this commandment which I command you today is not hidden from you, nor afar off.
It is not in the heavens, that thou shouldst say, Who will ascend for us into heaven, and bring it to us to make us hear, that we may do it?
Neither is it beyond the great sea, that thou shouldst say, Who will go beyond the sea for us, and fetch it for us to make us hear, that we may do it?
For the word {pitgama} is nigh you, in your schools; open your mouth, that you may meditate on it; purify your hearts, that you may perform it.
Behold, I have set before you this day the way of life, wherein is the recompense of the reward of good unto the righteous, and the way of death, wherein is the retribution of the wages of evil unto the wicked.
For I teach you today to love the Lord your God, and to walk in the ways that are right before Him, and to keep His commandments, statutes, and judgments, and live and multiply; that the Lord your God may bless you in the land into which you are entering to possess it.
But if you think in your heart that you will not obey, but will go astray to worship the idols of the nations, and serve them,
I proclaim to you this day, that you will perish, and will not prolong your days on the land to which you are to pass over the Jordan to possess it.
I attest this day, not only you, who are to pass away from this world, but the heavens and the earth, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and its reverse. Choose therefore the way of life, even the law, that you and your children may live the life of the world to come;
that you may love the Lord thy God, to obey His Word, and keep close unto His fear; for the law in which you occupy yourselves will be your life in this world, and the prolongment of your days in the world that cometh; and you shall be gathered together at the end of the scattering, and dwell upon the land which the Lord sware to your fathers, to Abraham, Izhak, and Jakob, to give it unto them.
