The Targum supplies the theological punchline the Torah leaves whispered. Because Joseph had withdrawn from the mercy that is above, and had put his confidence in the chief butler, he waited on the flesh. Therefore the chief butler did not remember Joseph, but forgat him, until from the Lord came the time of the end that he should be released (Genesis 40:23).
Pseudo-Jonathan, redacted in the Land of Israel in the early common era, is making explicit what Bereshit Rabbah 89 will also teach. Joseph's request to the butler — remember me when it shall be well with thee (Genesis 40:14) — was a small human act that, for a man of Joseph's standing, counted as a step back from full reliance on heaven. The butler's forgetting is not a failure of memory. It is heaven's pedagogy. The two years Joseph still must sit in prison are two years spent unlearning the lean on flesh.
The meaning of waiting on the flesh
The Aramaic phrase is sekha al bisra — literally, he waited on flesh. The Sages hear in this the basic tension of exile. It is not wrong to ask a human being for help. But when we have been carried, day after day, by the Word of the Lord (Genesis 39:23), leaning on a courtier whispers a different theology into the ear of heaven. Joseph's two extra years are heaven's way of saying: I brought you this far; let me bring you the rest of the way too.
The fixed time of release
The Targum adds the decisive phrase: until from the Lord came the time of the end that he should be released. There was always going to be a specific moment when Joseph would leave the prison. That moment was fixed in heaven, not in the butler's memory. The butler is merely the instrument — and he can only be used at the right hour. If he had remembered Joseph six months in, the story would have gone differently. Pharaoh would not yet have dreamed. The whole plan of the seven years of plenty and seven of famine would have been misaligned.
The Sages teach that heaven sometimes uses forgetfulness the way a musician uses a rest. The silence is not an absence. It is what allows the next note to land on the right beat.
Two years is precise
Pseudo-Jonathan connects this verse forward to Genesis 41:1: it was at the end of two years. Two years exactly. Not a vague delay. A measured interval. The precision is itself the comfort the Sages want us to hear: even when the prison feels endless, heaven is counting.
The takeaway is one of the most important teachings in the Joseph cycle. Human help is real. It is not the source. When the one who leans most carefully on God slips, for even a sentence, into leaning on a courtier, heaven is patient and persistent in returning him to his posture. The forgotten years are not lost years. They are the years that produce the Joseph who, when he finally stands before Pharaoh, will say: it is not man who interprets dreams; from before the Lord shall be an answer (Genesis 41:16).