Jacob blesses his sons with a breaking voice. "God the Almighty give you mercies before the man," he prays, "that he may release to you your other brother, and Benjamin" (Genesis 43:14). Then he adds something the Hebrew text only hints at. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan expands the verse and lets us hear Jacob's inner certainty: I am now certified by the Holy Spirit that if I am bereaved of Joseph, I shall also be bereaved of Shimeon and of Benjamin.
In the Targum's reading, Ruach ha-Kodesh, the Holy Spirit of prophecy, has briefly returned to Jacob. For more than twenty years the sages say it had departed, dulled by grief. Now, at the threshold of loss, it flickers back with a terrible clarity. Jacob sees the arithmetic of his suffering. If Joseph is truly gone, Simeon will be gone, and Benjamin will be gone. Losing one son becomes losing three.
This prophetic premonition sets up the stunning reversal ahead. Jacob sees only subtraction. He does not yet see that the "man" in Egypt — the vizier holding Simeon and demanding Benjamin — is Joseph himself. The grief the Holy Spirit shows him is real, but the conclusion is wrong, because one fact is hidden.
The Targum is gentle with Jacob's error. A prophet can still be a father. A father can still be wrong. The point is not that Jacob misread. The point is that Jacob blessed anyway. He asked for rachamim, mercies, and he let the boy go, and he handed the future of the house of Israel over to the Holy One, blessed be He, even while expecting the worst.
That is the posture of the patriarchs at their greatest: not certainty, but surrender with a prayer in the mouth.