The story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife in Genesis 39 is already tense. The Targum Jonathan ratchets the tension higher by adding theological motives, divine intervention, and a trial scene with behind-the-scenes maneuvering that the Hebrew original never mentions.
The most significant change is the Targum's repeated use of a specific phrase: "the Word of the Lord was Joseph's Helper." This appears four times in the chapter, replacing the Hebrew Bible's simpler "the Lord was with Joseph" (Genesis 39:2). The Aramaic Memra, the divine Word, is a theological concept the Targum uses to describe how God interacts with the physical world. Joseph's success in Egypt is not presented as natural talent or luck. It is direct divine assistance, mediated through the Memra.
When Potiphar's wife propositions Joseph, the Targum adds a motive for his refusal that goes beyond moral principle. He refused, the text says, "lest with her he should be condemned in the day of the great judgment of the world to come." This is not in Genesis at all. The Aramaic translators inserted the concept of an afterlife judgment, giving Joseph's refusal an eschatological dimension. He was not just avoiding sin. He was avoiding damnation.
The Targum also changes what Joseph was doing when he entered the house that fateful day. (Genesis 39:11) says vaguely that he came "to do his work." The Targum specifies: he came "to examine the tablets of his accounts." He was doing bookkeeping. This mundane detail makes the scene more vivid and strips away any suggestion that Joseph came looking for trouble.
The most dramatic addition comes at the end. Where Genesis simply says Potiphar threw Joseph in prison in anger, the Targum reveals that Potiphar first "took counsel of the priests," and these priests determined that Joseph should not be executed. This explains a longstanding puzzle: why would a master not kill a slave accused of assaulting his wife? The answer, according to the Targum, is that a priestly tribunal intervened and commuted the sentence. They may have suspected the truth. Joseph was sent to prison, not the executioner's block, because the evidence did not add up.