The covenant ceremony at Sinai in (Exodus 24) is solemn in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan turns it into a visionary experience with one of the most haunting images in all of ancient Jewish literature: an angel carrying a brick of slavery and placing it beneath God's throne.
The Targum identifies the voice that summoned Moses up the mountain as "Michael, the Prince of Wisdom." The Hebrew says simply "He said to Moses." The Targum names the speaker and gives him a title—Michael is not just an angel but the angelic patron of wisdom itself.
Before the tabernacle existed, the Targum explains, the firstborn served as priests. Moses "sent the firstborn of the sons of Israel" to offer sacrifices, "for until that hour had the firstborn had the office of performing worship, the tabernacle of ordinance not as yet being made, nor the priesthood given unto Aaron." This addition explains a puzzling detail: who performed the sacrificial service before the Levitical priesthood was established?
The most remarkable passage comes when Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders ascended and "saw the glory of the God of Israel." The Hebrew says they saw something like a sapphire pavement under God's feet. The Targum transforms this into a memorial of slavery: under God's footstool was "a memorial of the servitude with which the Mizraee had made the children of Israel to serve in clay and bricks," including pregnant women who were "made abortive by being beaten down with the clay." The angel Gabriel descended, made a brick from that very clay, ascended to heaven, and "set it, a footstool under the throne of the Lord of the world."
God keeps a brick of Egyptian slavery beneath His throne. The suffering of Israel is permanently displayed in heaven itself. This is the Targum's theology of divine memory—God does not forget what His people endured, and the evidence sits at His feet forever.
The Targum also notes that Nadab and Abihu deserved punishment for gazing too boldly at the divine glory, but "the stroke was not sent in that hour." It awaited them until the eighth day—the dedication of the Tabernacle described in (Leviticus 10), when they would die offering unauthorized fire. The Targum connects two stories separated by an entire book of the Torah.