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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 10:9 gives us the first great villain after the Flood. He was a mighty rebel before the Lord; therefore it is said, From the day that the world wa...
The verse in (Genesis 13:10) says Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the plain of the Jordan, well-watered, lush, an earthly paradise. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan pierces that pastoral scen...
The Hebrew Bible in (Genesis 13:13) says simply that the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against the Lord, exceedingly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses that generality. The Ara...
A roster of kings is usually a place where readers skim. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:2) will not let you skim. It reads the names.The Aramaic treats each royal name as a ...
A geographical footnote in (Genesis 14:3) becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, a small elegy. The Aramaic renders the location as the vale of the gardens (paredesaia), the place tha...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:5) turns a military roll call into a tour of the archaic world's titans. Kedarlaomer's coalition sweeps through the land and smites three peop...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:6) adds a single parenthetical that rewrites a whole people's identity: the Choraee (dwellers in caverns) who were in the high mountains of Ge...
The verse in (Genesis 14:8) simply lists who showed up for the battle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot let a list stay a list. It glosses Bela once more as the city which consumed it...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:9) makes a small geographical translation that reframes the entire conflict. The Hebrew Bible names four kings: Kedarlaomer of Elam, Tidal, Am...
The plain verse in (Genesis 14:10) is a grim military note: the vale of Siddim was full of tar pits, and the fleeing kings of Sodom and Amorah fell into them. Targum Pseudo-Jonatha...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:17) translates a forgotten geographical name into a vivid picture. The Hebrew Bible calls the location the Valley of Shaveh, which is the King...
The night is almost over. The angels have told Lot that the city is finished. Genesis 19:14 describes his frantic effort to save the only other relatives he has in town. "And Lot w...
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 that...
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 led ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 19:24 preserves one of the most heartbreaking traditions in all of rabbinic literature about the destruction of Sedom and Amorah. "And the Word of...
Genesis 19:26 is famously brief. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is not. "And his wife looked after the angel, to know what would be in the end of her father's house, for she was of the dau...
Lot's arc is almost done. Genesis 19:30 places him, finally, where the angel originally told him to go in Genesis 19:17 — the mountain. "And Lot went up from Zoar, and dwelt in the...
Genesis 19:33 is one of the most uncomfortable scenes in Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not look away. "And they made their father drink wine that night, and he was drunk. ...
"And it was on the third day, when they were weak from the pain of their circumcision, two of the sons of Jacob, Shimeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, took each man his sword, a...
The Torah closes its long list of Edomite chieftains with two final names: Magdiel and Iram. For most readers, they are just names. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 36:43) pauses...
When Joseph and Benjamin finally embrace, their tears do not flow for the reasons we expect. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the verse as prophecy."He bowed himself upon his brother B...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 9:24 reaches for superlatives: "There was hail, and fire darting among the hail with exceeding force: unto it had never been the like in all th...
The hail did not simply fall. It worked. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 9:25, the Aramaic paraphrase preserved in the tradition of Yonatan ben Uzziel, records the damage with...
The warning for the eighth plague is as graphic as anything the Torah has yet described. "They shall cover the face of the ground," the Lord tells Moses through the Targum Pseudo-J...
"They shall fill thy house, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of the Mizraee," the Lord declares through Moses, "(the like of) which neither thy fathers nor thy fo...
"The locust came up over all the land of Mizraim, and settled in all the limits of Mizraim exceedingly strong. Before him there had been no locust so hard, nor will there be like h...
"He covered the face of all the land, until the land was darkened, and every herb of the ground was consumed, and all the fruit of the tree that the hail had left; and nothing gree...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:19 records one of the most curious details in the entire plague narrative. "The Lord turned a wind from the west of exceeding strength, and ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 14:2 turns a navigational instruction into a theological ambush. God tells Israel to turn around and camp before the "Mouths of Hiratha"—gaping...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 14:28 closes the account of the Egyptian army with a single unforgiving sentence. "The waves of the sea returned, and covered the chariots, and...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not translate the Song of the Sea so much as it paints it. Where the Hebrew speaks of majesty, the Targum speaks of walls. Where the Hebrew says fire, t...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells the story of Amalek's assault at Rephidim with details the plain Hebrew text does not preserve. "And Amalek came from the land of the south and lea...
After the battle ended, God gave Moses a strange commandment: not to celebrate, but to write. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads it this way: "Write this memorial in the book of the ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the Amalek story with one of the most extraordinary vows in the Torah. "Because the Word of the Lord hath sworn by the throne of His glory, that H...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan captures Jethro's theological breakthrough in one line: "Now have I known that the Lord is stronger than all powers; for by the very thing by which the M...
