A geographical footnote in (Genesis 14:3) becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, a small elegy. The Aramaic renders the location as the vale of the gardens (paredesaia), the place that produced the streamlets of waters that empty themselves into the sea of salt.
The Targumist chooses the word paredesaia — a Persian loanword that becomes the English paradise. The valley where five kings will gather for battle is called, in this reading, the valley of gardens. Orchards. Flowing streams. A paradise.
And then the Aramaic turns the knife. These streams flow down into the sea of salt. The Dead Sea. The Targumist wants you to feel the doomed hydrology. Sweet water pouring into brine. Every stream that rises in this paradise ends in salt.
This is the geography of Sodom in miniature. A place of surface beauty, ringed by orchards, fed by gentle waters, and emptying into a sea that cannot hold life. The valley of the gardens is a theological map. From above it looks fertile. From the salt end it looks like everything dies here.
The Targumist has no room to editorialize, but the image does the work. The five wicked kings are meeting to fight over a valley that is already, in its very hydrology, predicting their end. Paradise above, salt below. Whatever empire they build on these streams will dissolve in the same sea.
Every generation builds on valleys that look like gardens. Wisdom, the Targum suggests, is knowing where your rivers empty.