1,809 texts · Page 29 of 38
The three travelers had finished their meal under the terebinths. They rose, and the Targum watches them split off into three different errands. The one who had come to announce a ...
The angels turn. They set their faces toward Sedom. And the Targum on (Genesis 18:22) pauses to tell us what Abraham does in that moment: he "supplicated mercy for Lot, and ministe...
Evening falls over Sedom, and two angels arrive. The Hebrew of (Genesis 19:1) says Lot was sitting "in the gate of Sedom." The Targum catches a detail the plain reading hides. "Two...
"Turn now hither," Lot says to the two angels, "and enter the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet" (Genesis 19:2). The angels refuse. "No; for in the street we wil...
(Genesis 19:3) has one of the most charming details in all of Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan doubles down on it. "And he persuaded them earnestly, and they turned aside to be wi...
The door is about to break. The mob is surging forward. And then (Genesis 19:11), in the Targum's rendering, becomes the moment the heavens intervene directly. "But the men who wer...
The sky is beginning to lighten. The judgment is scheduled for sunrise. (Genesis 19:15) finds the angels pleading with a man who cannot quite make himself move. "And at the time th...
Sometimes the purest image of divine mercy in Torah is also the most embarrassing. (Genesis 19:16) in the Targum reads this way. "But he delayed: and the men laid hold on his hand,...
The moment they clear the gates of Sedom, the angelic pair splits. (Genesis 19:17), in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, makes the division of labor unmistakable. "And it was that as they le...
In (Genesis 19:21), the Targum renders the angelic answer with a startling economy. "And He said, Behold, I have accepted thee in this matter also, that I will not overthrow the ci...
The newborn in Sarah's arms is laughter made flesh. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:7), she remembers who first carried the promise to her tent: not a man, not a neighbor,...
When the angel finally calls from heaven, the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:17) gives the reason out loud: for the righteousness' sake of Abraham. Ishmael lives not beca...
This is the most astonishing verse in the Akeidah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:10), Isaac is the one who speaks. He does not beg. He does not flee. He instructs his fa...
Something strange happens at the end of the Akeidah. The Torah says Abraham returns to his young men — but does not mention Isaac returning with him. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (...
One of the most haunting expansions in the entire Targum is this one. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:20), the Aramaic explains how Sarah died: Satana came and told unto S...
When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he did not send him alone. He sent him with a promise sealed by an oath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens the moment: the God...
When Eliezer retells the story to Laban and Bethuel, he quotes Abraham directly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:40) preserves the quote exactly as Abraham had spoken it: "Th...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens the scene of Rebekah's plan with a line the Hebrew does not speak. "Behold, this night those on high praise the Lord of the world, and the treasure...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan quietly drops a cosmic detail into the meal. When Isaac asks for wine, the Hebrew text does not explain where it comes from. The Targum does. "He had no ...
Jacob dreamed, and a ladder stood from earth to heaven (Genesis 28:12). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan fills the rungs with specific traffic. The two angels on the ladder were not anon...
Between Laban's hot pursuit and his morning confrontation, something happened in a dream that the plain Hebrew text only hints at. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes it vivid: an angel c...
Unexpectedly, Laban confessed. There is sufficiency in my hand to do evil with thee, he said — the words of a man who has just reviewed his own forces and knows he could crush the ...
Jakob saw the encampment approaching and his first instinct was dread. These are not the host of Esau who are coming to meet me, nor the host of Laban, who have returned from pursu...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest accounts in all of Jewish tradition (Genesis 32:25). Jacob was left alone across the Jabbok, and an angel wrestled him in the ...
"And he saw that he had not power to hurt him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:26) pauses to notice something the plain verse whispers but does not say outright: the angel lost...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the wrestling angel a confession that the plain text never imagined (Genesis 32:27). When dawn came, the angel pleaded: "Let me go, for the column of t...
"Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line the plain text only implies (Genesis 32:29): the new name was given "because you are magni...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws — the prohibition aga...
"I have seen the look of your face, and it is to me as the vision of the face of your angel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's most startling line to his brother (Genesis 3...
"And he built there an altar, and named that place, To God, who made His Shekhinah to dwell in Bethel, because there had been revealed to him the angels of the Lord, in his flight ...
In the field outside Shechem, Joseph meets a man who tells him his brothers have moved on to Dothan. The Torah calls him simply a man. The sages identified him as the angel Gabriel...
This is the most dramatic verse in the whole chapter, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacted in Eretz Yisrael in the early common era) has pulled the curtain all the way back. Ta...
There is a line in Jacob's blessing so strange the ancient translators could not leave it alone. In the Hebrew, Jacob asks an angel to bless his grandsons. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan k...
The Hebrew text says "the angel of the Lord appeared." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (3:2) gives that angel a name. "And Zagnugael, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in...
On the road to Egypt, one of the strangest scenes in the Torah unfolds. The Hebrew is terse to the point of confusion: the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Targum Pseudo-Jonath...
The scene is brief, bloody, and extraordinary. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with theological clarity: Zipporah took a stone, and circumcised the foreskin of Gershom her son,...
The resolution is as swift as the crisis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the inn scene with a verse the Hebrew almost whispers: the destroying angel desisted from him. The angel ste...
Pharaoh's reply is one of the most arrogant utterances in the entire Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes explicit what the Hebrew only implies: The name of the Lord is not made kno...
Scale matters in apocalyptic theology. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:12) opens the heavens over Mizraim and reveals something the plain verse leaves hidden: the Lord descend...
One of the most striking interpretive moves in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan happens quietly on (Exodus 12:13). The verse states that the blood on the doorposts will be a sign for Israel,...
The difference between the plain Hebrew and the Aramaic of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:23) is the insertion of the Memra — the Word of the Lord. In the Hebrew, God passes ...
The most famous number in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's account of the Exodus is seven. On (Exodus 12:37), as Israel moves from Pilusin (Pelusium) toward Succoth, one hundred thirty tho...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:19) watches a careful choreography. The Angel of the Lord, who had been leading Israel from the front, suddenly moves. He goes behind them....
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:24) picks a very specific moment for the Egyptian catastrophe. It happened in the morning watch—and the Targum tells us why that hour matte...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:2) turns a line from the Song at the Sea into a vision of impossible witnesses. "This is our God, who nourished us with honey from the rock...
The Targumic rendering of the prohibition against images goes further than the Hebrew — and further than most readers notice. "Sons of Israel, My people, you shall not make, that y...
God is sending an angel to lead Israel through the wilderness. But this is no ordinary angel. The Targum's warning is severe and strange at the same time. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:22) makes a promise that sounds almost like a battle cry: if thou wilt indeed hearken to His Word, and do all that I speak by Him, I wil...
