The Hebrew Bible tells us God remembered Sarah and she bore a son. The ancient Aramaic translators wanted to know more. They added a detail the Torah left out: God performed a miracle for Sarah that mirrored what Abraham had prayed for on behalf of Abimelech. The healing Abraham secured for a foreign king, God now turned toward his own wife.
When Isaac was weaned, the Torah says Sarah saw Ishmael "playing" (Genesis 21:9). The Targum interprets this as something far more serious: Ishmael was practicing idol worship. Sarah did not merely dislike Hagar's son. She saw a theological threat. And Abraham's distress over sending Ishmael away? The Targum says it was specifically because his son had taken up foreign worship.
Then comes the Targum's most striking addition. When Abraham sent Hagar away, he gave her a letter of divorce and bound her supplies to her waist to mark her as a servant. No ambiguity about her status. In the desert, when the water ran out, the Targum explains that Ishmael's thirst came because both he and Hagar had "wandered after strange worship." Hagar herself threw away an idol before crying out to God. The angel saved Ishmael not for his own merit, but for the righteousness of Abraham.
The chapter closes with Abraham planting not just a tree at Beersheba, but a "paradise"—a garden with food and drink for travelers—where he preached to passersby, calling them to "confess and believe in the Name of the Word of the Lord, the everlasting God." Abraham becomes not just a patriarch, but a missionary. The Targum also names Ishmael's two wives: Adisha, whom he divorced, and Fatima from Egypt. These names appear nowhere in the Hebrew Bible. The translators were filling gaps the Torah left open, and every addition carried a theological argument.