When Joseph's brothers return to Egypt with Benjamin in Genesis 43, the Hebrew text describes a tense meal. Targum Jonathan transforms it into a scene loaded with hidden signals, prophetic knowledge, and one remarkable kosher detail.
Jacob's farewell speech gets a mystical upgrade. In Genesis, he simply says "if I am bereaved, I am bereaved." The Targum rewrites this as a prophetic declaration: "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." Jacob was not resigning himself to fate. He was receiving divine assurance—the Holy Spirit itself confirmed that his sons would return.
The most striking addition comes when Joseph prepares the feast. Genesis says Joseph told his steward to bring the men home and "slaughter an animal and prepare." The Targum adds a critical instruction: "unloose the house of slaughter, and take out the sinew that shrank, and prepare meat before them." Joseph ordered the gid hanasheh—the sciatic nerve—removed from the meat. This is the sinew that Jews are forbidden to eat because of Jacob's wrestling match with the angel (Genesis 32:33). Joseph, disguised as an Egyptian official, was secretly keeping kosher and serving his brothers ritually prepared food without their knowledge.
The dinner seating arrangement becomes a calculated performance. Genesis says the brothers were amazed at being seated in birth order. The Targum explains how Joseph pulled it off: "he had taken the silver cup in his hand, and, sounding as if divining, he had set in order the sons of Leah on one side, and the sons of Zilpah on the other side, and the sons of Bilhah on another side." He pretended to use his divination cup to arrange them—but of course he already knew exactly who they were. He seated Benjamin beside himself.
The separation at dinner also gets a theological explanation. The Egyptians ate separately from the Hebrews not merely because of cultural taboo, but because "the animals which the Mizraee worshipped the Yehudaee ate." The Egyptians considered cattle sacred. The Hebrews ate beef. Sharing a table was theologically impossible.
Benjamin's extra-large portion is specified with precision: five portions total—"one was his own portion, one from himself, one from his wife, and two portions from his two sons." Joseph, his wife, and both his children each sent a share to the brother they had never met. And the final detail is poignant: "from the day when they were separated from him they had not drunk wine, neither he nor they, until that day" (Genesis 43:34). For over twenty years, both sides had been in mourning—and neither knew the other was doing the same.