The incense altar, the half-shekel tax, and the anointing oil in (Exodus 30:1-38) all receive remarkable expansions in the Targum Jonathan. What the Hebrew text presents as ritual instructions, the Targum frames as moments of direct divine encounter.
The incense altar was placed "before the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, where I will appoint My Word to be with thee." The Targum uses its characteristic phrase, "My Word," the Memra, to describe how God would meet Moses. The altar stood at the intersection of human worship and divine speech.
The most famous addition comes with the half-shekel. When God told Moses to collect a half-shekel from every Israelite, the Targum says "this valuation was shown to Moses in the mountain as with a denarius of fire." God held up a burning coin and said, "So shall every one give." Moses apparently could not picture what a half-shekel was, so God produced one made of flame.
The anointing oil gets an unusually precise recipe. The Targum specifies that the olive oil was measured as "a vase full, in weight twelve logas, a loga for each tribe of the twelve tribes." Twelve measures for twelve tribes. The oil itself was portioned to represent the entire nation.
The consequences for misuse are severe. Anyone who compounded a copy of the anointing oil or applied it to "the unconsecrated who are not of the sons of Aaron" would be "destroyed from his people." The same fate awaited anyone who replicated the sacred incense for personal use.
The Targum also intensifies the priestly danger. Aaron and his sons who failed to sanctify their hands and feet before entering the Tabernacle would "die by the fiery flame." The sanctuary was a place where heaven met earth, and the boundary between the two could kill.