Everyone knows the Priestly Blessing: "The Lord bless you and keep you" (Numbers 6:24-26). What most people do not know is that the Targum Jonathan expands those three elegant verses into something much wilder—a protective incantation against demons, evil spirits, and phantoms.
The Targum first addresses the Nazirite vow, adding that a person might choose to become a Nazirite after "seeing her who had gone astray in her corruption"—linking the previous chapter's adulteress directly to the Nazirite's decision to abstain. This psychological motivation does not appear in the Hebrew text.
The Nazirite's hair carried divine weight. The Targum calls it "the crown of Eloah" upon his head. If a person died near a Nazirite suddenly, contaminating the vow, the Nazirite had to restart entirely. The former days would "have been in vain." All that discipline, wasted by proximity to a corpse.
But the climax is the Priestly Blessing itself. Aaron and his sons blessed Israel "while spreading forth the hands from the high place." The Targum then gives an expanded version of each line. "The Lord bless thee in all thy business, and keep thee from demons of the night, and things that cause terror, and from demons of the noon and of the morning, and from malignant spirits and phantoms." A simple petition for protection becomes a comprehensive shield against an invisible spirit world.
"The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, when occupied in the law, and reveal to thee its secrets, and be merciful unto thee." Divine illumination becomes Torah revelation. "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee in thy prayer, and grant thee peace in thy end." The final blessing concerns the moment of death.
The Targum concludes: "I, by My Word, will bless them." Not God directly, but the Memra—the Word—as intermediary. Even in blessing, the Targum maintains its theology of divine distance.