Pharaoh's reply is one of the most arrogant utterances in the entire Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes explicit what the Hebrew only implies: The name of the Lord is not made known to me, that I should receive His word to release Israel. I have not found written in the Book of the Angels the name of the Lord. Of Him I am not afraid, neither will I release Israel.
The Targum adds an extraordinary detail: Pharaoh keeps a Book of the Angels. In ancient Egyptian religion, divine beings were catalogued by name in priestly registers. Pharaoh, claiming the prerogatives of a god-king, owns such a book. He has consulted it. The Name of the Lord — the YHVH — does not appear there.
The Limits of Pharaonic Theology
The sages of the Targumic tradition are savage in their irony here. Pharaoh's theology runs on catalogues. If a god is not in the registry, that god does not exist. The God of Israel, whose Name cannot be catalogued because He is the source of all names, is therefore absent from Pharaoh's universe.
And then the three-part rejection: the Name is not made known; Pharaoh is not afraid; he will not release Israel. Each refusal is a step deeper into the obstinacy that the Holy One had already predicted.
The Targum is not softening Pharaoh — it is exposing him. His arrogance is not personal; it is structural. He cannot recognize a God who refuses to fit in an Egyptian book.
The takeaway: the Exodus is the story of a God who breaks out of every catalogue. When Pharaoh says I have not found Him in my book, the Holy One answers with ten plagues and a splitting sea. The Jewish imagination insists that the God of Israel is precisely the God who cannot be filed.