1,983 texts · Page 33 of 42
Jacob blesses his sons with a breaking voice. "God the Almighty give you mercies before the man," he prays, "that he may release to you your other brother, and Benjamin" (Genesis 4...
Kindness frightens a guilty conscience more than cruelty does. When Joseph's men usher the brothers into the viceroy's private house, they should be relieved. No dungeon, no interr...
The steward's reply is the gentlest sentence in all of Genesis 43. The brothers have just thrust their silver forward, insisting on their innocence. And the steward — Menasheh, in ...
The meal is over. The brothers have eaten, drunk, been seated by their mothers' names, watched Benjamin receive five portions. They expect to go home with grain and a story. Joseph...
The brothers are barely out the city gate. The donkeys have not yet settled into their travel rhythm. Then a shout comes from behind them. "They had not gone far from city, when Jo...
The cup is found in Benjamin's sack. The brothers stand in the dust of the road, surrounded by armed Egyptians, and Judah begins a speech that will rearrange Jewish history. "What ...
Joseph's counter-offer is designed to look generous. It is in fact the most dangerous trap he has set yet. "Far be it from me to do thus; the man in whose hand the chalice hath bee...
What happens next is one of the great speeches in the Hebrew Bible. Judah steps out of the huddle of brothers and walks directly toward the vizier — the man he still believes is an...
Having named the sin, Joseph reframes it. He does not deny it. He places it inside a larger story. "It was not you who sent me hither, but it was from before the Lord that the thin...
Joseph has reconciled with his brothers. Now he needs them to deliver a message — quickly. "Make haste, and go up to my father, and say to him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, The Lord ...
When the news reaches the palace, Pharaoh is delighted — and the Targum hears the reason under the delight. "A voice was heard in the royal house of Pharaoh, saying, The brothers o...
Jacob speaks. For the first time in the Targum's chapter, he is called by his second name — Israel. "Israel said, Many benefits hath the Lord wrought for me; He delivered me from t...
Jacob pauses at Be'er Sheva on his way to Egypt. He offers sacrifices. He waits. He listens. And the Holy One speaks to him in a night vision. "He said, I am God, the God of thy fa...
The reunion scene in (Genesis 46:29) should be pure joy. After twenty-two years of believing Joseph was dead, Jacob finally sees his son alive, a ruler in a chariot, riding out to ...
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...
It is one of the shortest verses of Jacob's farewell, and one of the most surprising. Jacob, the quiet dweller in tents, claims a city by right of conquest. "I have given to thee t...
Reuben was supposed to inherit everything. As the firstborn of Jacob, three crowns rested on his head by right — bechorah (the birthright), kehunah (the priesthood), and malchut (t...
A father can love his sons and still refuse to stand on their side. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the hardest lines in Jacob's blessing — a public disavowal. "In their co...
A blessing that divides is still a blessing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the Hebrew's terse curse-on-anger and reveals its surgical logic. "If they dwell together, no king nor rul...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not describe a gentle Messiah. It describes a warrior king who ends the reign of tyrants. "How beauteous is the King, the Meshiha who will arise fro...
The Targum has shown the Messiah as warrior. Now it shows him as judge, and the portrait turns tender. "How beautiful are the eyes of the king Meshiha, as the pure wine! He cannot ...
Jacob's blessing of Dan is spare in Hebrew. "Dan shall judge his people." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears a specific future in it. "From the house of Dan there is to arise a man w...
When Jacob died, Egypt mourned for seventy days (Genesis 50:3). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains why the Egyptians wept so hard for a foreign patriarch. They were not mourning only ...
The funeral was supposed to be solemn. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the wildest scenes in all of midrash instead. "When his sons had brought him into the land of Kenaan, a...
The brothers were terrified. So they did what frightened children do — they invoked the father. "Thus shall you say to Joseph: forgive now the guilt of thy brethren and their sin, ...
Comes the answer. Joseph looks at his brothers — these old, frightened men — and finally explains the awkward meal. "You indeed imagined against me evil thoughts, that when I did n...
"Come, let us take counsel against them in these matters, to diminish them that they multiply not, so as that, should war be arrayed against us, they be not added to our adversarie...
The blow did not come first. The vision did. "And Mosheh turned, and considered in the wisdom of his mind, and understood that in no generation would there arise a proselyte from t...
Why did the cry of the Hebrews finally pierce heaven? Because Pharaoh had stopped being a tyrant and become a monster. "And it was after many of those days that the king of Mizraim...
"And their cry was heard before the Lord, and before the Lord was the covenant remembered which He had covenanted with Abraham, with Izhak, and with Jakob." The Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
"And He said, The oppression of My people who are in Mizraim is verily manifest before Me, and heard before Me is their cry on account of them who hold them in bondage; for their a...
"And I have revealed Myself to thee this day, that by My Memra they may be delivered from the hand of the Mizraee, to bring them up out of the unclean land, unto a good land, and l...
"And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel cometh up before Me, and the bruising of the Mizraee wherewith they bruise them is also revealed before Me." The Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
Here is a difficult teaching: the Holy One tells Moses the outcome before the negotiation begins. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it with unsettling clarity: it is manifest before Me t...
Before the first plague falls, God speaks in future tense. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the warning with striking physicality: I have sent forth the stroke of My power, and have ...
The third sign at the burning bush is the one that rehearses the first plague. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with bare clarity: thou shalt take of the water of the river and ...
Back in Midian, the Holy One delivers a piece of news that unlocks the Exodus. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the phrasing with startling specificity: they have come to nought, a...
On the road to Egypt, the Holy One issues a warning that has troubled readers for two millennia. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan softens the Hebrew's I will harden his heart into something ...
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 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...
The first public assembly ends not in riot but in worship. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the triple movement: the people believed, and heard that the Lord had remembered the son...
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...
Pharaoh's response to the slaves' religious request is to tighten the screws. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the logic with cruel precision: the (same) number of bricks which the...
The cruelty has a chain of command. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the structure: the exactors whom Pharoh set over them as officers beat the sons of Israel, saying, Why have not...
The Israelite foremen march into Pharaoh's court and deliver one of the boldest complaints in the Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders their protest with an expanded final clause:...
The foremen walk out of Pharaoh's court knowing they have lost. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the grim recognition: the foremen of the sons of Israel saw that they were in evil,...
The answer to the foremen's despair comes from the Holy One, not from Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the divine reassurance: Now have I seen what Pharoh hath done: for by ...
God outlines the Exodus in a sequence of verbs that the sages will later count as the Arba Leshonot Shel Geulah — the Four Expressions of Redemption. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserv...
