Exodus chapter 6 is mostly genealogy—the kind of passage readers skim. The Targum Jonathan turns it into a minefield of hidden revelations.
The chapter opens with God revealing the divine Name to Moses. The Hebrew Bible says God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai but did not make the Name known to them. The Targum adds a mystical qualifier: God's Name "as it discovereth My Glory"—or in an alternate reading, "in the face of My Shekinah (the Divine Presence)"—was not known to the patriarchs. The translators distinguished between knowing God's Name as a word and experiencing the full radiance of the divine presence that the Name unlocks.
Then come the genealogies, and the Targum plants explosive claims inside the family trees. Levi lived 137 years, the Targum notes, and then adds what no biblical text says: "He lived to see Moses and Aaron, the deliverers of Israel." Levi, the third son of Jacob, allegedly survived long enough to witness his own descendants become liberators.
But the biggest shock is buried in the entry for Kehath. He lived 133 years, and the Targum calls him "the saint"—then declares he "lived to see Phinehas, who is Elijah, the Great Priest, who is to be sent to the captivity of Israel at the end of the days." In one genealogical aside, the Targum identifies Phinehas the zealot priest with the prophet Elijah and assigns him a messianic role as the figure who will return to redeem Israel in the final age.
The chapter also quietly identifies Shaul, son of Simeon, as Zimri—the man who publicly took a Midianite woman in the incident at Baal Peor (Numbers 25:14). And Elasar, Aaron's son, married "from the daughters of Jethro who is Putiel." Every name in this family tree carries a second identity, a hidden story, a future destiny. The Targum's genealogies are not records. They are prophecy disguised as bookkeeping.