The levirate marriage ceremony in (Deuteronomy 25) is already dramatic in the Torah. Targum Jonathan turns it into theater. The brother-in-law's refusal must happen "before five of the sages, three of whom shall be judges and two of them witnesses." The sister-in-law must speak "in the holy language"—Hebrew, not the Aramaic the audience actually spoke. Then the sandal itself gets described in extraordinary detail: "a heeled sandal whose lachets are tied, the latchets at the opening of the sandal being fastened." He stamps the ground. She unties the latchet. She spits "as much spittle as may be seen by the sages." Every physical gesture is choreographed for the courtroom.
The flogging law introduces a number the Torah leaves ambiguous. Where the Hebrew says "forty stripes," the Targum specifies "forty may be laid upon him, but with one less shall he be beaten"—thirty-nine, the rabbinic standard. The reason: "lest he should add to smite him beyond those thirty and nine, exorbitantly, and he be in danger." The Targum protects the criminal from overzealous punishment.
The command to remember Amalek receives the most stunning expansion. The Targum describes how Amalek attacked specifically "those among you who were thinking to go aside from My Word"—the tribe of Dan, "in whose hands were idols." The clouds of glory that protected Israel had rejected these idol-carriers, exposing them to Amalekite raiders who "mutilated them, and they were cast up." Amalek's cruelty targeted Israel's most vulnerable precisely because their sin had stripped away divine protection.
And the passage ends with a phrase no one expects in Deuteronomy: "but of the days of the King Meshiha you shall not be unmindful." The Targum ties the destruction of Amalek to the coming of the Messiah, transforming a historical grudge into an eschatological promise.