The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 14:21 loads Moses's staff with cosmic freight. This is not a shepherd's walking stick. It is the great and glorious rod which was created at the beginning—one of the ten things the rabbis said were made in the twilight between the sixth day and the first Sabbath (Avot 5:6).
And engraved on that rod, in the Targum's vision, are four layers of name and memory. The Great and Glorious Name of God. The ten signs that struck Mizraim. The three fathers of the world—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. The six mothers—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah. The twelve tribes of Jacob.
Moses raises this encoded rod over the sea. Every name etched into its wood rises with it. The entire Jewish story, from the patriarchs to the plagues, is in his hand.
Then the wind comes. A vehement east wind blows all night. The sea dries. And in the Targum's crowning detail: the waters divide "into twelve divisions according to the twelve tribes of Jacob." Not one wide corridor but twelve narrow ones, one for each tribe. The names engraved on the rod become the architecture of the sea.
This is the Targum's doctrine of tradition in action. A miracle is not only future rescue. It is the past made operational. Every ancestor, every plague, every name Moses can remember is pressed into service when the sea must split.
Takeaway: the Targum teaches that redemption flows through the names of those who came before, and that a rod with the right names engraved on it can part any sea.