The Torah says Jacob sent Joseph from the Valley of Hebron. The word valley — emek — also means depth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:14) pounces on the double meaning.
Jacob told Joseph to check on his brothers and return me word to the deep Counsel. What counsel? The deep counsel which was spoken to Abraham in Hebron; for on that day began the captivity of Mizraim.
The reference is to the Covenant Between the Pieces. God had told Abraham, decades earlier: your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, and they will be enslaved and afflicted four hundred years (Genesis 15:13). The promise had been spoken in Hebron. And now, from that same valley, Jacob sent Joseph — and the prophecy began to come true on that very day.
The Targumist is doing something staggering. He is telling us that Joseph's descent into Egypt was not an accident, not a family tragedy, not even a consequence of his brothers' jealousy alone. It was the fulfillment of a promise made two generations earlier. The clock on the four hundred years started ticking the moment Joseph left his father's tent.
Jacob did not know this. But the land remembered. Hebron had heard the covenant, and Hebron now released the first captive. The whole story of Israel in Egypt — the slavery, the plagues, the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai — was compressed inside a father's errand to check on some shepherds. History, the Targum teaches, often begins with a small assignment and a boy who says Behold me.