The Targum opens chapter 41 with a subtle theological edit. The Hebrew says it was at the end of two years, and Pharaoh dreamed. Pseudo-Jonathan adds a single phrase that rearranges the whole sentence: it was at the end of two years, that the remembrance of Joseph came before the Word of the Lord. And Pharoh dreamed, and, behold, he stood by the river (Genesis 41:1).
In the biblical text, the dream seems to come first and the memory of Joseph second. In the Targum, the memory comes first. The Meimra d-Ya, the Word of the Lord, remembers Joseph — and only then does Pharaoh dream. Heaven is not reacting to Pharaoh's dream; Pharaoh's dream is being caused by heaven's remembrance.
Pseudo-Jonathan, redacted in the Land of Israel in the early common era, is performing a small inversion that changes the whole theology of the story. Egypt thinks it is the center of the narrative. The king has dreamt; the magicians will be summoned; someone will interpret. But the Targum quietly lets us see the backstage. The cause is not in the palace. The cause is that heaven has decided it is time for a prisoner to come out.
Bereshit Rabbah 89 hears the sequence as a permanent pattern. Great world events — an empire's dream, a kingdom's famine, a nation's turning — are often the visible shape of an invisible timing. Heaven remembers; the world dreams. We see only the dream. The Targum gives us the first clause.
Notice also where Pharaoh stands. By the river — the Nile, Egypt's great god, the source of all its fertility and pride. The Targum lets the detail stand. Pharaoh's dream will take place at the river because the whole Egyptian imagination is organized around it. The ox rising from the river, the grain ripening from the river, the land fed by the river — this is what Egypt knows. And into this most Egyptian of settings, the Targum has already announced, the Meimra d-Ya has injected its remembering.
The takeaway is immense. When we are forgotten, the Targum teaches, we are not forgotten everywhere. Somewhere in the world a king will dream, a circumstance will shift, a door will open — not because we were lucky, but because heaven's clock has reached the hour. Our task in the prison is to be the kind of person who is still recognizable on the day the door opens.