The Hebrew text of (Genesis 3) says Eve "saw that the tree was good for food." The Targum Jonathan says she saw Sammael, the angel of death, standing right there, and was afraid. That single addition changes everything about the scene. Eve does not eat in ignorance. She eats despite seeing death itself.

The serpent's argument gets sharper too. In the Hebrew, the serpent simply says "you will not die." The Targum gives him a philosophical weapon. The serpent "spake accusation against his Creator" and told Eve that "every artificer hateth the son of his art." God, the serpent claims, is a jealous craftsman who does not want His creation to become His equal. Eating the fruit would make them "as the great angels, who are wise to know between good and evil." This is not a snake whispering temptation. This is a theological argument about God's motives.

Before the fall, Adam and Eve wore "purple robes" of glory. When they ate, the Targum says they were "divested of the purple robe in which they had been created." They did not simply discover they were naked. They lost their royal garments. Later, God replaced those robes with "vestures of honour from the skin of the serpent, which he had cast from him." The serpent's own shed skin became humanity's clothing.

The curse on the serpent is expanded dramatically. His feet were cut off. His skin would be shed every seven years. The poison of death was placed in his mouth. And the enmity between the serpent and Eve's descendants is reframed as a matter of Torah observance. When her sons keep the commandments, they will crush the serpent's head. When they abandon the law, the serpent will bite their heel. The remedy for that bite comes "in the days of the King Meshiha" (Messiah).

After expulsion, Adam did not wander aimlessly. He went to dwell on Mount Moriah, the future site of the Temple. And the final verse reveals that God created the Torah before the world, prepared Eden for the righteous, and prepared Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death) for the wicked, "like the sharp, consuming sword of two edges." The Targum turns Genesis 3 from a story about fruit into a story about the entire architecture of reward and punishment.