Esau looked at the caravan and asked the question any returning brother might ask: "Who are these with you?" (Genesis 33:5). In the plain text Jacob answers simply, "the children whom God has graciously given your servant." But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives him a richer phrasing.
"They are the souls which have been given to me through mercy from before the Lord upon Your servant."
Souls, not just children
The Targum's word choice — nafshata, souls — does something important. Jacob does not say "these are my sons." He does not list tribal futures or boast of his fertility. He calls his children souls, and he frames every one of them as a gift of mercy he did not earn.
The rabbis treasured this formulation. Every child is, at the most fundamental level, a soul entrusted to a parent by God. You do not own them. You steward them. And when a brother who once wanted you dead asks who they are, the truthful answer is not "mine" but "gifts to me" — gifts that could have been withheld, gifts that arrived through mercy and not through merit.
The takeaway: the parent who knows his children are souls before they are his sons has the best chance of raising them well.