1,416 texts · Page 21 of 30
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan names the trees: flowering poplar, almond, and plane (Genesis 30:37). Jakob did not pick the first branch at hand. He chose three specific species, each one ...
Jakob knew exactly where to set the peeled rods — in the canals, in the troughs of water, at the one place where the flocks were certain to gather (Genesis 30:38). Targum Pseudo-Jo...
Jakob told his wives what their father had done during the twenty years of his service. If now he said, The streaked shall be thy wages, all the sheep bare streaked; and if now he ...
Here is why Laban did not notice Jakob was gone for three full days. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us: when Jakob departed, the shepherds went to the well and found no water. They w...
"And the sun rose upon him before his time." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:32) preserves one of the tenderest details in the whole Jacob cycle: the sun itself rearranged its s...
"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they wept." In the plain Torah text, this is a moment of pure reconciliation. Targum Pseudo-...
"And they journeyed from thence, offering praise and prayer before the Lord. And there was a tremor from before the Lord upon the people of the cities round about them, and they pu...
After the brothers threw Joseph into the pit, they sat down to eat. Then they looked up and saw a caravan. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:25) gives the caravan an unexpected...
The Torah says plainly in (Genesis 47:7) that Jacob "blessed Pharaoh." It does not tell us what the blessing was. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan supplies the words: "May it please the ...
The image is unsettling. Jacob compares Dan to a serpent lurking beside the road, waiting for horses' heels. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains the metaphor and names the man. "A chos...
"And Joseph died, the son of a hundred and ten years. And they embalmed him with perfumes, and laid him in an ark, and submerged him in the midst of the Nilos of Mizraim." The Tora...
Pharaoh's whole policy had one aim — shrink the Hebrews. And this verse is the Targum's quiet demolition of the whole policy. "But as much as they depressed them, so much they mult...
Pharaoh confronts the midwives. Why are you letting the boys live? And Shifra and Puvah — in the Targum's Aramaic, Jokheved and Miriam — give an answer so audacious it borders on t...
The Torah says Jokheved "hid him three months." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:2) does the math. "And the woman conceived and bare a son at the end of six months; and she ...
Three months. That is how long a mother can pretend her baby does not cry. "But she could conceal him no longer, for the Mizraee had become aware of him. And she took an ark of pap...
Why was Pharaoh's daughter in the river that morning? The Hebrew says simply: "to bathe." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:5) has a different answer — and it is startling. "...
The Torah tells the Midian episode in a sentence. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:21) tells it in a small novel. "But when Reuel knew that Mosheh had fled from before Phara...
The Hebrew text says "the angel of the Lord appeared." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (3:2) gives that angel a name. "And Zagnugael, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in...
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 ...
At the burning bush, the Holy One asks Moses to do something that violates every shepherd's instinct. The staff he has carried through decades in Midian has just become a serpent. ...
After Moses grasps the serpent by the tail and it becomes a rod, the Holy One explains the purpose of the miracle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it plainly: In order that they may be...
The second sign at the burning bush is more disturbing than the first. The serpent was outside Moses' body; the leprosy is on it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the bluntness of ...
The mercy arrives as quickly as the warning. The Holy One says to Moses: Return thy hand into thy bosom — Aitaph in the Aramaic — and when Moses withdraws it, it had become clean a...
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 ...
Here is one of the most extraordinary expansions in all of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The biblical Hebrew says only that Moses took the rod of God in his hand. The Aramaic adds a cosm...
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 ...
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 tells Moses that Pharaoh will not listen, but that redemption will come anyway — by force. The Hebrew says God will lay His hand upon Egypt (Exodus 7:4). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
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 moment arrives. Moses and Aharon enter Pharaoh's court, and Aharon throws down the rod. The Torah says it became a tannin, usually translated serpent or sea-monster (Exodus 7:1...
The Egyptian magicians threw down their rods too, and theirs also became serpents. So far, a tie. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:12) adds a detail the Hebrew only hints at...
Moses stands at the water with the rod lifted, and God's words are simple and total: By this sign thou shalt know that I am the Lord (Exodus 7:17). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodu...
The first plague is about to reach past the river itself. God tells Aharon to stretch the rod over rivers, trenches, canals, and every place for collecting their waters (Exodus 8:1...
The order was given; now it is done. Aharon lifts the rod, strikes the Nile in full view of Pharaoh and his court, and the whole river turns (Exodus 7:20). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan o...
The plague has a smell. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:21) stays close to the Hebrew, but what it describes is the sensory aftermath of a cosmic blow. The fish that were in th...
The first plague had fallen, but Egypt's astrologers refused to concede. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:22) gives a detail most translations flatten: So also did the astrologe...
The second plague is announced with an almost comic precision. Frogs will not merely swarm; they will specify. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:28) lists the destinations: into ...
God commands Aharon to lift his rod and bring up the frogs upon the land of Mizraim (Exodus 8:1). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:1) echoes the Hebrew faithfully but it is the ...
Moses's promise is exact and generous. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:7): The frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy house, and from thy servants, and from thy people; and...
Aharon strikes the dust and every grain of it becomes a biting insect. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:13) is emphatic: all the dust of the earth was changed to become insects,...
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...
With the fourth plague, God introduces a distinction that will repeat for the remaining plagues: that day in the land of Goshen where My people dwell, there no swarms of wild beast...
The plague arrives as promised. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:20) is terse and terrifying: the Lord did so; and sent the mixed multitude of wild beasts in strength to the hou...
The prayer works. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:27) delivers the outcome with plain satisfaction: the Lord did according to the word of the prayer of Mosheh, and removed the ...
The fifth plague is livestock pestilence, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:3) renders it with memorable Aramaic precision: the stroke of the Lord's hand shall be as it hath ...
The distinction is now locked in. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:4): the Lord will work wonders between the flocks of Israel and the flocks of the Mizraee, that not any of tho...
Before the sixth plague breaks on Egypt, the Holy One gives Moses and Aaron a strange instruction. Not a rod to raise. Not a river to strike. Handfuls of fine ash from the kiln. "T...
It happened exactly as the Lord said. Moses and Aaron took the furnace ash in their hands, walked out to meet Pharaoh, and Moses flung the ash skyward. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
