The Smell of Jacob Was the Scent of Temple Incense

When Isaac draws Jacob close and breathes him in, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what the patriarch actually smells. It is not the field. It is not the goats. It is the incense of the Beit ha-Mikdash.

"He smelled the smell of his vestments, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of the fragrant incense which is to be offered on the mountain of the house of the sanctuary, which shall be called a field which the Lord hath blessed, and that He hath chosen, that therein His Shekinah might dwell" (Genesis 27:27).

A prophecy of the Temple

This is one of the most striking moments in all of Pseudo-Jonathan. Isaac, breathing in his son, is suddenly given a vision of the Temple that will stand, centuries later, on the mountain where Isaac himself was once bound. The ketoret — the holy incense — has not yet been commanded. The Tabernacle has not yet been built. But Isaac smells it on Jacob's robes.

Why? Because those robes, the Targum has already told us, were Adam's. And Adam's garments carried the fragrance of Eden, which was the fragrance of the Divine Presence. Eden, Sinai, and the Temple are three windows onto the same light. Isaac smells all three.

The field the Lord has blessed

Notice the phrase: a field which the Lord hath blessed. The Hebrew of Genesis says a field which the Lord hath blessed; the Aramaic reads it as a specific place — the Temple Mount. What Isaac is blessing, through Jacob, is the future geography of Jewish holiness itself.

The takeaway: a father's blessing, given well, can carry the scent of a sanctuary that has not yet been built. Pseudo-Jonathan wants us to believe that Jewish prayer, Jewish incense, Jewish sacrifice — all of it was breathed into the world on Pesach night in a tent in Beersheba.