When Miriam died on the tenth day of the month Nisan, the well that had sustained Israel throughout their desert wanderings vanished. The Targum makes this connection explicit in a way the standard text of (Numbers 20) does not: "On account of the innocency of Miriam a well had been given, so when she died the well was hidden." The miracle of water was always her miracle.
God told Moses to take "the rod of the miracles"—a specific name the Targum gives to his staff—and instructed both Moses and Aaron to "adjure the rock, by the Great and manifested Name." This detail is remarkable. The divine plan was for Moses to speak God's ineffable Name to the rock, and only if the rock refused to respond should he strike it once. Moses was given a two-step protocol, and he skipped straight to striking.
What happened next is the Targum's most dramatic addition. Moses struck the rock twice. The first time, it dropped blood. Only on the second strike did water pour forth. That image—a rock bleeding before it yields water—appears nowhere in the biblical text. It transforms Moses's disobedience from an abstract failure of faith into something visceral and disturbing, a wound inflicted on creation itself.
When Moses later sent messengers to Edom requesting passage, the Targum adds a stunning moral promise: "We will not seduce virgins, nor carry off the betrothed, nor commit adultery." This is not in the Torah. The ancient translators wanted to show Israel pledging extraordinary ethical conduct to their hostile cousins.
The death of Aaron unfolds with devastating tenderness. After Moses stripped Aaron of his priestly vestments and placed them on Elazar, the Cloud of Glory lifted on the first of the month of Av. Moses descended the mountain with torn garments, weeping: "Woe unto me, for thee, my brother Aaron, the pillar of Israel's prayers!" Both the men and the women of Israel wept for thirty days—the Targum specifies both genders, emphasizing that all of Israel mourned.