Genesis 42 tells how Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy grain during the famine and failed to recognize him. Targum Jonathan turns this reunion into something far more calculated—Joseph did not just happen to encounter his brothers. He engineered the entire meeting.
The Targum adds a detail found nowhere in the Hebrew text: Joseph "had appointed notaries at the gates of the city to register daily, of every one who came, his name and the name of his father." He was running a surveillance operation. Every foreigner entering Egypt was logged by name and patronymic. Joseph was not passively waiting. He was actively hunting for ten specific names.
When the brothers arrive, they do not go straight to Joseph. The Targum says they "looked through all the streets, and public places, and hospices, but could not find him." They were searching too—for their lost brother—but in the wrong places. They expected a slave, not a viceroy. The irony is devastating: both sides were searching for each other, and only one side knew it.
The Targum also explains the recognition gap with a concrete physical detail. Joseph recognized his brothers "because, when separated from them, they had the token of the beard." But they could not recognize him "because at that time he had not the token of the beard, and at this hour he had it." He was seventeen and beardless when they sold him. Now he was a grown man with an Egyptian appearance.
When Joseph takes Shimeon as hostage, Genesis gives no reason for choosing him specifically. The Targum does: Shimeon was selected because he "had counselled them to kill him." This was not random—it was precise, targeted justice. The brother who once proposed murder now sat in chains.
Another telling addition: after Levi discovers the returned money, the Targum specifies it was Levi who opened his sack first because "he had been left without Shimeon his companion." The inseparable pair of Levi and Shimeon—who together destroyed Shechem (Genesis 34:25)—were now forcibly separated, and Levi felt the absence keenly.
When Jacob hears the news, his lament in the Targum is more pointed than in Genesis: "Of Joseph you said, An evil beast hath devoured him; of Shimeon you have said, The king of the land hath bound him; and Benjamin you seek to take away—upon me is the anguish of all of them." Three sons lost in sequence, and Jacob names each one (Genesis 42:36).