The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens the timing of the scene to a breath. "It was when Izhak had finished blessing Jakob, and Jakob had only gone out about two handbreadths from Izhak his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting" (Genesis 27:30).
Two handbreadths. Shnei tefachim. About eight inches. Jacob had barely crossed the threshold when Esau walked through the door.
Why such a narrow margin?
The rabbis read this detail as evidence of Heaven's precise orchestration. If Jacob had lingered, he would have been caught. If Esau had arrived a moment earlier, the blessing would have gone to him. The two brothers passed each other by the width of a hand — not by Rebekah's skill alone, but by a providence that shaved the moment to its thinnest possible seam.
Pseudo-Jonathan, always attentive to divine choreography, preserves this detail in Aramaic. The blessing of the covenant was never truly Esau's to receive. The oracle given to Rebekah in the womb — the elder shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:23) — was going to find its way to Jacob one way or another. The two handbreadths are the margin of Heaven's timing.
The takeaway
Jewish tradition does not believe history moves by accident. The Talmud in Chullin teaches that a man does not bruise his finger below unless it has been decreed above. Pseudo-Jonathan is applying that same reading here. Esau arrives two handbreadths too late because the Holy One, blessed be He, measured the door. The takeaway: the moments that feel like near-misses are often the moments that were planned most carefully of all.