Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 40:7 takes the bronze laver — a basin of water set between the sanctuary and the altar — and turns it into a picture of teshuvah. Place the laver here, the meturgeman says, and put water therein for the sins of such as convert by repentance, and pour off their perversity like water.
Water for the sinner
On the plain level, the laver was for the priests. They washed their hands and feet before approaching the altar (Exodus 30:20). The meturgeman widens the doorway. The laver is not only for priests in service. It is for anyone who turns back — anyone who, in the language of the Aramaic, converts by repentance.
The phrase is gentle. Sin is not scraped off like rust. It is not burned off like a stain. It is poured off like water. The person who repents stands before the basin, and what was crooked flows out. Perversity, in the targumist's image, is liquid. It moves. It leaves.
Between the altar and the sanctuary
The laver's location matters. It stands between the altar — where offering happens — and the tabernacle — where the divine presence rests. The meturgeman is saying that repentance is exactly this: a passage between the two. You cannot enter the presence of the God of Israel straight from the world. You cannot even enter from the altar. You pass through water.
Later Jewish practice picked up the same thread. The mikveh is water for transformation. Yom Kippur hinges on teshuvah as pouring-off. The morning ritual of washing hands recalls the laver. The targumist's insight — that sin flows — has shaped centuries of Jewish prayer and practice.
The takeaway: repentance is not a scrubbing. It is a flowing. The God of Israel placed water at the exact spot where a person turns, so that what no longer belongs can simply run away.