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The funeral was over. Jacob lay in the cave of Machpelah, and the family rode back to Egypt together. That should have been the end of it. But when Joseph stopped coming to the fam...
"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 Torah names two cities: Pithom and Ra'amses. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (1:11) names two others: Tanis and Pelusium. "And they set over them work-masters to afflict t...
"And they made their lives bitter by hard service in clay and bricks, and all the labour of the face of the field; and in all the work which they made them do was hardness." The Ta...
The princess opens the basket. She does not find a quiet, sleeping infant. She finds a crying baby. "And she opened, and saw the child, and, behold, the babe wept; and she had comp...
He had grown up in silk. Now he stepped out into the brick kilns. "And in those days when Mosheh was grown up, he went forth to his brethren, and saw the anguish of their souls, an...
The Hebrew says only "two Hebrew men." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:13) names them. "And he went out the second day, and looked; and, behold, Dathan and Abiram, men of t...
Dathan's answer is a dagger. "Who is he who hath appointed thee a chief man and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, said he, as thou didst the Mizraite? And Mosheh was afraid, and ...
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...
Here is one of the most tender footnotes in all of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. Aharon lifts his hand, the frogs swarm up. And the meturgeman pauses to explain why it is Aharon, not Mos...
The third plague is lice — venomous insects that emerge from the dust. Again Aharon must wield the rod, not Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:12) gives the breathtaking re...
Pharaoh offers a compromise. Bring your sacrifices inside the land. Don't go anywhere. Moses's answer, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:22) renders it, is a lesson in cultura...
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...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan expands Jethro's counsel into a short curriculum of communal life. "Give them counsel about the statutes and laws, make them understand the prayer they a...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates Jethro's criteria for judges into four clear qualifications: "Thou shouldst elect from all the people men of ability who fear the Lord, uprigh...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the conditional terms of Israel's unique standing: "Now, if you will truly hearken to My Word and keep My covenant, you shall be more beloved b...
The commandment against idols is sweeping in a way that startles when you slow down and read it carefully. "You shall not make to yourselves image or figure, or any similitude of w...
The commandment against taking God's name in vain is often read as a rule about cursing. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sees something far more grave. "My people of the house of Israel...
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...
After the thunder and the twelve-mile retreat, the people beg Moses to speak to them instead of God. And Moses answers with a line that still echoes. "Fear not; for the glory of th...
The Targumic rendering of the prohibition against images goes further than the Hebrew — and further than most readers notice. "Sons of Israel, My people, you shall not make, that y...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest laws in the Torah. "If thou wilt make an altar of stones unto My Name, thou shalt not build them sculptured; for if thou l...
The last verse of the Decalogue's aftermath contains a detail about priestly decency. "And you, the priests, who stand to minister before Me, shall not ascend to My altar by steps,...
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...
One of the strangest rituals in the civil law is the piercing of a servant's ear. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with bureaucratic precision. "His master shall bring him bef...
Among the harder laws of Exodus is the case of the amah ivriyah — the young Hebrew maidservant. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the verse its full protective force. "If these thre...
The ancient world knew the right of sanctuary. A murderer who reached a temple's altar could cling to the horns of the altar and claim divine protection. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan spells out one of the most practical laws in the Torah — what a man owes his victim when the victim does not die. "If he rise again from his illness, and...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a heartbreaking case from the civil code. "If men when striving strike a woman with child, and cause her to miscarry, but not to lose her life, t...
The goring ox is one of the oldest cases in legal literature — it appears in Hammurabi's code from the 18th century BCE — but the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the Torah's version...
One of the most interpretively rich laws in the Torah is the difference between stealing an ox and stealing a sheep. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not leave the puzzle unsolved. ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan transforms a cryptic self-defense law into a piece of moral clarity. "If the thing be as clear as the sun that he was not entering to destroy life, and o...
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...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the law of entrusted property with precise legal architecture. "If the thief be found, he shall restore two for one. If the thief be not found, 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 ...
A young woman has been seduced. Her future, by the standards of the ancient world, has been altered against her will — and often against her knowledge of what was being taken. What...
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 lender holds collateral. The borrower is poor enough that his only pledge was the cloak on his back. Evening comes. The air cools. What does the Torah require? Targum Pseudo-Jona...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 22:30) sets an unusual standard: holy men, tasting unconsecrated things innocently, shall you be before Me; but flesh torn by wild beasts a...
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...
This verse is among the strangest in the Torah, because it seems to contradict everything else the Torah says about the poor. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:3) is blun...
