Genesis 35 records some of the most consequential events in Jacob's life—Rachel's death, the birth of Benjamin, and Jacob's return to his father Isaac. The Targum Jonathan, the ancient Aramaic rendering from roughly the 1st-2nd century CE, threads these events together with messianic prophecy and theological daring that the standard Hebrew text barely hints at.
When God commanded Jacob to return to Bethel and build an altar, Jacob ordered his household to surrender all the idols they had taken from the looted temple of Shechem. The Targum specifies that the earrings the people gave up were not ordinary jewelry—they bore engraved images of the local gods. Jacob buried everything under the terebinth near Shechem. Then, as they traveled, a divine tremor fell upon the surrounding cities so that no one dared pursue the sons of Jacob. God's terror functioned as a military escort.
At Bethel, Jacob erected an altar and the Targum adds a striking phrase: he named the place "To God, who made His Shekinah (שכינה) to dwell in Bethel." The standard text says nothing about the Shekinah—that is the Targum inserting its core theological concept, the idea that God's presence physically inhabits specific locations on earth.
The Targum's treatment of Rachel's death introduces a detail absent from the Hebrew Bible. When the nurse Deborah died and was buried below Bethel, Jacob learned there of his mother Rebekah's death—which is why the place was called "the other weeping." The Targum links two unrelated mournings into one devastating moment of compounded grief.
God's blessing to Jacob included a prophecy the Targum significantly expands. Where the Hebrew says "kings shall come from you," the Targum specifies "a holy people, and a congregation of prophets and priests, shall be from your sons, and two kings shall yet from you go forth." The pillar Jacob erected received not just an oil anointing, but a libation of wine and a libation of water—because, the Targum explains, "thus it was to be done at the feast of Tabernacles." Jacob was performing the Sukkot (the Festival of Tabernacles) water libation ceremony centuries before the Temple existed.
Most remarkably, when Jacob pitched his tent beyond the Tower of Eder after Rachel's burial, the Targum adds: "the place from whence the King Meshiha will be revealed at the end of days." Rachel's tomb becomes a messianic landmark. And when Reuben disturbed Bilhah's bed, Jacob feared he had produced a wicked son like Ishmael or Esau. But the Holy Spirit answered directly: "Fear not, for all are righteous and none of them is profane." God Himself intervened to assure Jacob that every one of his twelve sons was worthy.