The Hebrew Bible says Noah planted a vineyard (Genesis 9:20). The Targum Jonathan says he "found a vine which the river had brought away from the garden of Eden." This single addition transforms Noah from a farmer into a man who accidentally recovered a relic of paradise. The grapevine was not just any plant. It was Edenic, carried downstream by the Flood from the original garden. Noah's drunkenness becomes something stranger and sadder—he was undone by a fruit of Eden itself.
The chapter opens with dietary law, and the Targum sharpens every rule. The Hebrew forbids eating flesh "with the life-blood still in it" (Genesis 9:4). The Targum specifies two cases: flesh "torn of the living beast, what time the life is in it" and flesh "torn from a slaughtered animal before all the breath has gone forth." This is not translation. This is early halakhah (Jewish religious law) embedded in narrative—the Targum is legislating the Noahide laws with the precision of a legal code.
The murder law gets the same treatment. The Hebrew says "whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed" (Genesis 9:6). The Targum splits this into two legal scenarios. If there are witnesses, "the judges shall condemn him unto death." If there are no witnesses, "the Lord of the world will bring punishment on him in the day of the great judgment." The translators built an entire judicial system into a single verse, complete with an eschatological fallback for unprovable crimes.
The rainbow covenant is filtered through the Memra as always—"between My Word and the earth"—but the real surprise comes with Ham. The Hebrew says Noah "knew what his youngest son had done to him." The Targum says Noah learned this "by the relation of a dream." And Ham was cursed not just for seeing his father's nakedness, but because he was "inferior in worth, on the account that he had not begotten a fourth son." The curse falls on Canaan, Ham's fourth son, because Ham's failure to produce a fourth worthy heir somehow demanded it.
The blessing of Japheth is equally transformed. The Hebrew says God will "enlarge Japheth" (Genesis 9:27). The Targum says Japheth's sons "shall be proselyted and dwell in the schools of Shem." The translators turned a territorial blessing into a prophecy about conversion to Judaism and Torah study.