The Torah says the brothers hated Joseph and could not speak a word of peace to him (Genesis 37:4). Readers sometimes take this as a character flaw — petty brothers who refused to be civil. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:4) sharpens the image.
The Targum keeps the phrase almost word-for-word: they cherished enmity against him, and were unwilling to speak peacefully with him. But the Aramaic word for cherished — netaru — is heavy. It is the word for guarding a grudge, nursing it, feeding it like a fire that must never go out. The brothers did not merely fail to greet Joseph. They worked at their hatred. Every day they chose it again.
The sages read the verse's silence as a strange consolation. They could not speak peacefully — meaning, they would not pretend. When Joseph walked by, they did not fake a smile. They did not lie. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, centuries later, would say: their crime was terrible, but at least they did not add hypocrisy to it (see Bereshit Rabbah 84:9).
It is a thin comfort. Honest hatred is still hatred. And the silence at the family table would soon grow into a plot, and the plot into a pit. The Targumist is telling us that Joseph's exile did not begin when he was sold. It began when ten men decided, every morning, that today they would still refuse to say shalom.