The narrative in Exodus 24 troubles the ancient interpreters. Nadab and Abihu, the comely young sons of Aharon, ascended the mountain with the elders, beheld the God of Israel, and ate and drank. No lightning struck. No fire consumed them. They saw what Moses alone should have seen and walked away alive.
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan resolves the tension with a chilling addition. The stroke was not sent in that hour, the text says, but it awaited them on the eighth day for a retribution to destroy them. The fire was simply delayed. When Nadab and Abihu later offered their esh zarah, strange fire, before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1), the judgment withheld at Sinai finally landed.
For that moment on the mountain, though, they saw the glory of the Shekhinah and rejoiced. Their offerings had been accepted with favor. They experienced the closest communion with the divine recorded in Torah, and the Targum says they ate and drank in that presence, or as if they ate and drank, nourished by the vision itself.
The Targum's gloss is brutal and tender at once. God allowed them the full measure of revelation before the account came due. Their privilege was not revoked; it was suspended. The young priests who glimpsed heaven carried an unpaid debt back down the mountain, and it caught them at the very moment they reached for more.
The lesson the old rabbis drew: ecstasy is not acquittal. What you see on the mountain still must be earned in the courtyard, and the fire that warmed you can still be the fire that consumes.