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The Torah says God formed man from the dust of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:7) takes this one sentence and turns it into a cosmic geography. "The Lord God create...
The Torah says God planted a garden in Eden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:8) goes further. The garden "was planted by the Word of the Lord God before the creation of the wo...
The Torah names two trees in the garden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:9) tells us the dimensions of one of them. The Tree of Life, the Targumist says, stood "in the midst o...
Naming is an act of authority. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:19), the Lord creates every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens and brings them to Adam "to see ...
The Torah says God took "one of his ribs" to make the woman. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:21) gets oddly specific. "He took one of his ribs, it was the thirteenth rib of th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:22) gives us the first credits for human culture. Zillah bore Tubal-Cain, "the chief (rab) of all artificers who know the workmanship of brass ...
The enigmatic "Nephilim" of (Genesis 6:4) get names in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. "Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days." These are the Watche...
The Torah gives Noah minimal construction specs. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:14) hands him a blueprint. "Make thee an ark of the wood of cedars; a hundred and fifty cells ...
The Flood is named. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:17) renders it: "I, behold, I bring a flood of waters upon the earth to swallow up all flesh which hath in it the spirit of...
How did every species find the ark? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:20) gives an answer the Torah does not. "Of the fowl after its kind, and of all cattle after its kind, and ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:14) does what Torah often does at its most sublime moments — it lists. Every wild animal after its kind. Every domestic beast after its kind. E...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:1) turns the tide of the story with a phrase the Hebrew does not quite say. And the Lord in His Word remembered Noah, and then — listen careful...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:4) plants the ark on a very specific patch of earth. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, in the month the Targum calls Nisan, the gre...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:5) tracks the waters like a patient sailor counting days. The Aramaic says that the waters went and diminished until the tenth month, the month...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:13) dates Noah's first real look at the new earth with the kind of precision the Aramaic loves. It was the six hundred and first year of Noah's...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:17) gives Noah his first instruction on the new earth, and it is almost identical to the instruction the Holy One gave Adam in Eden. Bring fort...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:22) anchors the new covenant in something every farmer and every child understands. Sowing in the season of Tishri, and harvest in the season o...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:2) marks a sharp change in the relationship between humanity and every other living thing. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon e...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:10) widens the covenant after the Flood to include every creature, without exception. With every living soul that is with you, of birds, and of...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:11) delivers the promise every frightened heart has clung to since Noah stepped off the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, and will no...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:12) introduces the idea of a sign — an ot — that will anchor the covenant through all time. This is the sign of the covenant which I establish ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:14) explains the rainbow with a detail the plain Hebrew does not supply. When I spread forth My glorious cloud over the earth, the bow shall be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:15) is a verse that has carried comfort through every Jewish generation. I will remember My covenant which is between My Word and between you a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:16) sharpens the promise one more time. The bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:17) closes the rainbow passage with a final seal. Noah is told face to face: This is the sign of the covenant that I have covenanted between My...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:2) does something the plain biblical list never does — it gives the sons of Japheth their addresses. Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:7) lists the sons of Kush, the son of Cham, and then spins out a gazetteer the Hebrew does not provide. Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Raam...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:20) closes the genealogy of Cham with a summary line that quietly announces one of Torah's deepest ideas. These are the sons of Cham, accordin...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:32) closes the Table of Nations with a sentence that should make every reader pause. These are the houses of the sons of Noah, according to th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:1) opens the story of the Tower of Babel with a claim so bold it has echoed through Jewish thought for two thousand years. All the earth was (...
Read the verse in the Hebrew Bible and you hear only bricks and mortar. But open Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:4) — the expansive Aramaic paraphrase that fills the margins ...
It is a small verb and it does a great deal of work. He brought him forth without. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:5) keeps the gesture literal: the Lord brings Abraham outsi...
Old names do not drop off quietly. When the Lord tells Abraham that Abram will no longer be his name, He is rewriting a biography that has already lasted ninety-nine years. Targum ...
Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:13), the Aramaic adds the detail that places this animal outside or...
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 ...
The blessing Isaac pours over Jacob is compact, poetic, and nearly liturgical. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it in solemn Aramaic. "Therefore the Word of the Lord give thee of...
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...
The Torah drops a cryptic detail in the middle of an Edomite genealogy: this is Anah who found the yemim in the wilderness. For two thousand years, readers have argued about what y...
Jacob's blessing of Joseph reaches into cosmic language. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves two divine titles worth pausing on. "From the Word of the Lord shall be thy help; and He w...
"And the Lord said unto Mosheh, He who spake, and the world was; who spake, and all things were. And He said, This thou shalt say to the sons of Israel, I AM HE WHO IS, AND WHO WIL...
The Holy One answers Moses' protest about his lame speech with a question that has echoed through three thousand years of Jewish reflection. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with ...
When Pharaoh demanded a sign, Aharon was to throw down his rod and watch it become a serpent. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:9) translates the Hebrew tannin with the word ...
The Egyptian astrologers had matched the first two plagues. Blood — yes. Frogs — yes. Lice — no. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:14) is blunt: The astrologers wrought with thei...
The fourth plague is introduced with a vividness the Hebrew keeps restrained. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:17) translates the arov — the mixed swarm — as a mixed multitude o...
Of all the expansions in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, few are as beautiful as the Four Nights passage on (Exodus 12:42). The Aramaic says there are four nights written in the Book of Me...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:21) loads Moses's staff with cosmic freight. This is not a shepherd's walking stick. It is the great and glorious rod which was created at ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:22) gives the sea-splitting a measurement. The Torah says the waters were "a wall on their right and on their left." The Targum specifies: ...
The Hebrew of the Song of the Sea says the waters "piled up." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives us a different picture entirely, more vivid and more strange: For by the Word from before...
