When Jacob finally set out to reunite with Joseph, he sent Judah on ahead. The Torah says only that Judah was to "show the way before him to Goshen" (Genesis 46:28). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears a deeper mission in that brief sentence: Judah was sent to establish a beit midrash, a house of Torah study, before the family set foot in the land of their coming bondage.
The Targum renders it this way: Jacob sent Judah "to indicate the way before him, to subdue the pillars of the earth, and to provide him a house of dwelling in Goshena." The Hebrew idiom l'horot — to teach — lies behind the word "indicate." Judah's job was not just to mark the road. It was to set up a school.
Why a School Before a House
Jacob understood something that every Jewish community since has understood. You can survive anywhere — Goshen, Babylon, Spain, Poland, America — as long as you bring Torah with you and open the doors of study before you unpack your own luggage. Without a beit midrash, the family would be absorbed. With one, they could endure four centuries of slavery and walk out the other side still themselves.
The aggadah in Bereishit Rabbah 95:3 among the 2,921 texts from <a href='/categories/midrash-rabbah.html'>Midrash Rabbah</a> in our database tells the same story with slightly different words. Jacob sent Judah to "establish a house of instruction from which horaah — teaching — should go forth." The Targum preserves this reading almost verbatim. The pattern is ancient: before the tents go up, the school goes up.
The "Pillars of the Earth"
The Targum's curious phrase about subduing "the pillars of the earth" reflects a further tradition. Judah was a warrior among his brothers, the one who vouched his soul for Benjamin. Here he is sent not with weapons but with Torah to "subdue" the spiritual atmosphere of Egypt. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, composed in its final form between the 4th and 8th centuries CE, repeatedly frames Torah study as the real foundation holding up the world.
The takeaway is practical and timeless. Wherever Jews are going next, the first tent is the one with benches and books inside it. Everything else can follow.