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The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes each commandment at Sinai the same way — as a living body of fire. The second word traveled exactly as the first. "Like storms, and lightnings,...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the Sabbath commandment with a widening circle. "But the seventh day is for rest and quietude before the Lord your God: you shall not perform any...
The fifth commandment carries a promise most commandments do not. "My people, the house of Israel, Let every man be instructed in the honour of his father and in the honour of his ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the four short commandments of the second tablet and expands each into a thundering sermon. Every prohibition ends with a cosmic consequence — not ...
The tenth commandment looks mild next to murder and theft. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan will not let it stay mild. "Sons of Israel My people, Ye shall not be covetous companions or p...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens the civil law section of Exodus with an astonishing clarification. "If thou shalt have bought a son of Israel, on account of his theft, six years h...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a tight principle of agricultural damages. "If a man break in upon a field or a vineyard, and send in his beast to feed in another man's field, t...
Here is a case without witnesses. A neighbor entrusts an animal or a vessel to another, and the thing disappears. No thief is caught. No one can say what happened. Only two people ...
A shepherd watches over a borrowed flock. One day a lion drops out of the hills, or a wolf from the hedges, and by the time the shepherd reaches the scene, the animal is torn to pi...
You borrow your neighbor's tool. It breaks in your hands. Or you borrow his ox, and the animal dies while under your watch. Who swallows the loss? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus ...
There is a kind of cruelty that is not visible in the moment. It lives in a tone of voice. A dismissive glance. A pressing of advantage against someone who has no one to defend him...
There is a moment when a poor person walks up to a wealthier neighbor and asks for a loan. The wealthier neighbor has a choice. He can treat the moment as a market opportunity. Or ...
A man walks up to you in the market with a story. His neighbor, he says, has wronged him. He needs someone to stand with him at the gate, to nod when he speaks, to lend weight to h...
The courtroom fills. The elders have been talking. A consensus is forming. You are the last voice, and you can see which way the wind blows. The majority has already chosen its ver...
You are walking along a road. Across the field you see an ox. It is the ox of a man you cannot stand. You know, privately, he has done wicked things. Your dislike is not petty — it...
The ox that wanders free was one thing. This case is harder. The donkey has collapsed under its load. Its owner — a man you dislike for good reason — is struggling to lift it. And ...
It would have been enough to say: rest on the seventh day. That alone would have been a radical gift in the ancient world. But the Torah cannot stop there. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan o...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:3) describes the extraordinary moment before the covenant is sealed: Mosheh came and set before the people all the words of the Lord, an...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:4) describes what Moses built at dawn: Mosheh wrote the words of the Lord, and arose in the morning and builded an altar at the lower pa...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:7) records the moment the covenant was sealed: Mosheh took the Book of the Covenant of the Law and read before the people; and they said...
The plain Hebrew of Exodus 24:12 reads simply that God promised Moses the tablets of stone, the Torah, and the commandment. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot leave it that spare. T...
When the Holy One commanded Israel to contribute materials for the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the instruction could have been simple taxation. Every household owes ...
The construction of the Mishkan is described in Exodus 26 with a catalog of measurements and materials that reads, on the surface, like an architect's invoice. Ten curtains of fine...
The Torah closes the Tabernacle construction chapters with a quiet command. In the Tent of Meeting, outside the parochet that conceals the Ark, Aharon and his sons are to tend a la...
Exodus 28:1 names the first family of Jewish priests. Aharon, brother of Moses, is brought near with his four sons: Nadab, Abihu, Elazar, and Itamar. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan pre...
When God commissioned the priestly wardrobe, He did not sketch a uniform. He named eight specific garments, each with a job. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:4 lists them in...
The shoulder-stones of the ephod were not to be carved roughly. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:11 insists the engraver work as the engraving of a ring — every letter disti...
Most translations of Exodus 28:12 call the shoulder-stones a memorial, and leave the word undefined. A memorial of what? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan fills the silence. The gems are ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:17 reads the gemstones as geography. The breastplate held four rows of precious gems, answering to the four regions of the world. When Aaron...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:18 names the second row of the high priest's breastplate: smaragd, and sapphire and chalcedony. On them were engraved Judah, Dan, and Naphta...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:19 lists the third row of the breastplate: ligure, and agate, and amethyst, engraved with Gad, Asher, and Issachar. The tribes of this row w...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:20 closes the breastplate's geography with the fourth row: chrysolite, onyx, and jasper, engraved with Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The ve...
The shoulder stones were a memorial. The breastplate was something more intimate. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:29 insists that Aaron bore the names of the sons of Israel...
The robe of the high priest rang when he walked. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 28:34 gives a specific count: a golden bell, then a pomegranate of hyacinth and crimson, alter...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 29:30 legislates how the high priesthood is passed on. For seven full days, the son who rises after his father wears the vestments and enters t...
When God told Moses to take a census of Israel, the command came wrapped in a warning that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes explicit: every man must give a ransom for his soul when he ...
One of the most radical moments in Torah commerce: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the Torah's command that the rich shall not add to, and the poor shall not diminish from, the half...
What happened to all those half-shekels? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan follows the Torah's answer: Moses was to gather the silver of the ransom from the sons of Israel and apply it to the...
The recipe for the holy anointing oil is exact and extravagant: five hundred minas of myrrh, two hundred and fifty of sweet cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of sweet calamus, five h...
If the anointing oil was for people and vessels, the incense was for the air itself. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the command to Moses: take spices — balsam, onycha, galbanum —...
Bezalel of Judah was the master artisan of the Mishkan. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the Torah's insistence that he did not work alone. God appointed with him Oholiab bar A...
The Mishkan was about to be built. Artisans had received the Spirit of wisdom. Materials were being gathered. And then, in the middle of the construction commands, God paused and s...
The Sabbath command carries a severity that shocks modern readers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it in its original sharpness: "Ye shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy to ...
The Hebrew Torah commands Israel to keep the Sabbath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds three words that change the flavor entirely: Israel shall keep the Sabbath "to perform the delight...
The day Aaron had hoped to delay arrived. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes it in language that is more revealing than the Hebrew's euphemism: "they arose, and sacrificed burnt-offe...
The moment the calf was made, the voice on the mountain changed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the chilling command God gave to Moses: "Descend from the greatness of thine honou...
Moses's final argument turned to the deepest court of appeal in the Jewish tradition: the merit of the avot, the patriarchs. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it precisely: "Remembe...
When Moses saw the camp dancing around the calf, the Torah says he saw that "the people were naked." What kind of nakedness? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the T...
