The verse in (Genesis 12:19) is Pharaoh's outburst, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens its center. Why saidst thou, She is my sister? When I would take her to me to wife, plagues were at once sent against me, and I went not unto her.
The Hebrew Bible leaves the plagues ambiguous. The Targum does not. Pharaoh confesses openly: the moment he tried to approach Sarah, heaven struck his house with afflictions, and I went not unto her. The matriarch remained untouched.
This is crucial for the tradition. The Sages and the Targumists will return again and again to the question: was Sarah, taken from Abram's tent by force, ever violated? The Aramaic answer is emphatic and unanimous. Pharaoh himself is made to testify that the plagues kept him away. The Sages of the Talmud will extend the same reading to Abimelech in (Genesis 20). The matriarchs of Israel are protected in these moments by divine intervention so swift and so visible that even the pagan king admits it.
Why does the Targumist insist? Because genealogy is theology. Every child of Sarah — and therefore every descendant of Isaac — must be unambiguously Abraham's. The covenant cannot run through uncertain paternity. The plagues are not merely punishment; they are protection of a line.
And Pharaoh's final words carry an exhausted dignity: Now behold thy wife, take her and go. The king of the mightiest empire in the world has been schooled by a night of afflictions. He hands the woman back and tells the foreigner to leave. Sometimes the Holy One defends the covenant not with armies but with a king's insomnia.