The covenant that God first made with Abraham under the night sky is spoken again — this time to Isaac. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the same thunderous promise. "I will multiply thy sons as the stars of the heavens, and will give to thy sons all these lands, and through thy sons shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 26:4).
Three promises, stacked. Descendants like stars. Land stretching as far as the eye can see. And through those descendants, blessing flowing outward into every people on earth.
Why repeat the promise to Isaac?
The sages taught that covenants in the Torah are not one-time contracts but living inheritances. Each generation has to hear the promise with its own ears. Abraham heard it at night, when the stars were burning. Isaac hears it in a time of famine, when the land is bare and the future looks like dust. The same promise. A different hour.
Pseudo-Jonathan's phrasing is careful. It says "through thy sons shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." The Jewish calling is not insular. The covenant with Isaac is the same covenant whose final purpose is universal blessing — Jews as the carriers of a light that was never meant to stay in one tent.
The takeaway
The Targum wants us to feel that Isaac is not a smaller Abraham. He is the second link in a chain that is still being forged. The stars that multiplied for Abraham's eyes will multiply for Isaac's eyes, and then for Jacob's, and then for ours. Every Jew reading this verse stands inside that promise.