The Torah records a small family scene: "And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation; also the sons of Makir the son of Menasheh were born on Joseph's knees" (Genesis 50:23). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens that phrase and finds something startling inside.
The sons of Makir, son of Menasheh, were not merely dandled on Joseph's knees. "When they were born, they were circumcised by Joseph."
Picture the scene. Joseph is an old man, second to Pharaoh, carried through Mizraim in processions, surrounded by scribes and viziers. And on the day his great-grandchildren are born, the viceroy of Egypt himself takes the flint and performs the brit milah.
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis (50:23) knows what it is doing. In an Egyptian court full of pressure to assimilate — where Joseph had worn Egyptian robes, taken an Egyptian name (Tzafnat-Paneach), married the daughter of an Egyptian priest — he still refused to let the covenant skip a generation. Abraham's knife passed through Isaac, through Jacob, through Joseph, and now into Joseph's hand at the bedside of a newborn in the palace of Mizraim.
The midrash is teaching something that would become central to the <a href='/texts/'>thousands of texts</a> in our database about exile. Assimilation is not a single choice. It is an accumulation of small refusals to act. Joseph keeps acting. He keeps picking up the knife.
Beloved, the covenant does not travel automatically. Someone in every generation has to carry it across the room.