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Leviticus 20 prescribes death penalties for violations listed in the previous chapter. The Targum Jonathan specifies four distinct methods of execution that the Hebrew Bible leaves...
Buried in Leviticus 22's rules about blemished offerings, the Targum Jonathan inserts one of the most beautiful passages in all of Targumic literature—a theology of sacrifice roote...
The Sotah ritual—the ordeal of the woman accused of adultery—is already one of the strangest passages in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan makes it stranger, adding psychologic...
The Hebrew Bible mentions a cloud over the Tabernacle. The Targum Jonathan turns it into a sentient navigation system—a pillar of divine fire and glory that dictated every movement...
Numbers 11 tells the story of Israel complaining about food in the wilderness. The Targum Jonathan adds a graven image in the camp of Dan, a wind that nearly destroyed the world, a...
The punishment of the ten faithless spies in the Hebrew Bible is a single verse. The Targum Jonathan turns it into body horror: worms emerging from their navels and consuming their...
A man gathered wood on the Sabbath and was executed for it. The Hebrew Bible tells this story in three verses. The Targum Jonathan expands it into a legal precedent about judicial ...
Korah did not just challenge Moses. According to the Targum Jonathan, he manufactured a theological argument using the very fabric of his clothing, hid treasure he had looted from ...
The day after Korah's company was swallowed by the earth, the people of Israel accused Moses and Aaron of murder. God sent a plague. And Aaron did something no other priest would e...
The Torah's most mysterious ritual—the red heifer—gets even stranger in the Targum's retelling. The standard text in (Numbers 19) simply describes burning a red cow and using its a...
When Miriam died on the tenth day of the month Nisan, the well that had sustained Israel throughout their desert wanderings vanished. The Targum makes this connection explicit in a...
The place was called Shittim, and the Targum explains the name: it derives from shetutha, meaning foolishness and depravity. The Targum's version of (Numbers 25) describes Moabite ...
After the plague killed twenty-four thousand, God ordered a new census. The Targum's version of (Numbers 26) opens with a phrase absent from the Torah: "the compassions of the heav...
The war against Midian in the Targum's version of (Numbers 31) is a supernatural thriller. Twelve thousand Israelite soldiers went out with Phinehas carrying "the Urim and Thummim ...
The Targum transforms the Torah's bare itinerary of Israel's wilderness journeys in (Numbers 33) into an annotated guide of miracles and disasters. Every campsite gets a story, a n...
The Targum's version of (Numbers 35) contains one of the most radical theological claims in all of ancient Jewish literature. It explains why a manslayer confined to a city of refu...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 9) contains one of the most dramatic expansions in all of Aramaic literature. When Moses recalls the golden calf, the Hebrew says God was angry ...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 10) buries an entire civil war inside what the Hebrew Bible treats as a simple travel itinerary. The Hebrew says Israel "journeyed from Beeroth ...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 14) transforms a list of dietary laws into a detailed zoological manual. Where the Hebrew names animals and moves on, the Targum adds identifyin...
The unsolved murder ritual in (Deuteronomy 21) is already strange in the Torah—elders break a heifer's neck in a barren valley. Targum Jonathan makes it stranger and more spectacul...
The first-fruits ceremony in (Deuteronomy 26) is beautiful in the Torah. Targum Jonathan makes it lavish. Where the Hebrew says simply to bring produce in a basket, the Targum adds...
Targum Jonathan opens (Deuteronomy 31) with Moses entering not a tent but "the tabernacle of the house of instruction"—a study hall. Even at the threshold of death, the setting is ...
The Blessing of Moses in (Deuteronomy 33) gets the full Targum treatment—every tribe's destiny expanded, every blessing loaded with specifics the Torah never mentions. It opens wit...
The death of Moses in (Deuteronomy 34) is eight verses in the Torah. Targum Jonathan turns it into one of the most elaborate death scenes in all of ancient Jewish literature. From ...
It will be, from new month to new month, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to bow before Me," said Hashem (Isaiah 66:23). Teach us, our teacher, a person from Israel...
"Remember what Amalek did to you" (Deuteronomy 25:17). God remembers the righteous for good and the wicked for destruction. When He recalled Abraham, He spoke with affection: "Shal...
Arise, my light, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you [For behold, darkness will cover the earth, and thick darkness will cover the nations, and th...
… And He said to him ‘go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering’ (Bereshit 22:2) What is the land of Moriah? There is a whole bundle of Sages here, ...
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, On the first day of the first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation. And thou shalt put therein the ark of ...
Chapter 9 They [the Israelites]--the entire congregation--came to the wilderness of Tzin in the first month, and the nation settled there, and Miriam died there and was buried ther...
Chapter 10 “And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that th...
Eli led Israel for forty years, and the day Eli died, he forsook his tabernacle, as it is said, “He rejected the tent of Joseph” (Psalm 78:67), and “He gave His strength into capti...
Rabbi said: which is the straight path that a man should choose for himself? One which is an honor to the person adopting it, and [on account of which] honor [accrues] to him from ...
Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from every man, as it is said: “From all who taught me have I gained understanding” (Psalms 119:99). Who is mighty? He who subdues his [ev...
With ten utterances the world was created. And what does this teach, for surely it could have been created with one utterance? But this was so in order to punish the wicked who des...
The field that Abraham bought from the children of Chet etc --- R Tanchuma said: from the burial of Sarah to the burial of Abraham was 38 years...... it comes to teach you that all...
Moses had the worst errand of his life. God told him to bring his brother up the mountain to die. He could not bring himself to say the words. Aaron said them for him. "My brother,...
In ancient Israel, a person who killed someone by accident did not go free. Neither was he executed. He ran for his life to one of six cities of refuge, and the roads that led ther...
Pray let me cross over. The word nah indicates that this is a request. the good land that is on the other side of the Jordan. This is what R’ Yehudah meant when he said that the la...
Rav Nachman once made a statement that shocked his colleague: "Jacob our father never died." Rabbi Yitzchak pushed back immediately. "They embalmed him. They eulogized him. They bu...
"A husband inherits from his wife." From where do we learn this? Learn it from “And he shall inherit it,” (Numbers 27:11) with the word “it” written in the feminine “otah,” which c...
Devorah, was a prophetess. What was she like, that she prophesied about Israel and judged them? Wasn't Pinchas ben Eleazar alive then? I bring Heaven and Earth to bear witness that...
David arose, and fled that day from before Saul: This is [the meaning of] the verse, He has made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11), everything that the Holy One,...
Our Rabbis taught: At the time that the anointed king comes, he [will] stand on the roof of the temple and announce to Israel and say "Humble ones! The time of your redemption has ...
On the last day of his life, Moses did something no prophet had ever done — he dressed his successor in public, with his own hands. He commanded that a golden throne be brought, al...
Rabbi Yishmael asked: why did Job risk everything by demanding an answer from God (Job 31:35)? Because Job understood something terrible. Without death, life has no name. Without d...
...It is written (Ps. 119:62) At midnight do I constantly rise to give thanks unto Thee. Did David rise at midnight? Behold! He arose at the beginning of the night, for it is said,...
(Ib. b) We are taught: The sages made a fence to their words [to protect their ordinances], lest a man coming from the field in the evening, would say: "I will go home, eat a littl...
