1,416 texts · Page 22 of 30
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:14) preserves a warning that cuts through every illusion Pharaoh ever held. "At this time I will send upon thee a plague from the heavens," ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:18), the Aramaic paraphrase long attributed to Yonatan ben Uzziel, does something the plain Hebrew text does not. It names the source of the...
"Uplift thy hand towards the height of the heavens," the Lord says to Moses (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:2)2), "and there shall be hail on all the land of Mizraim, upon men...
When Moses raised his rod, heaven answered with a miracle that defied nature itself. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:23) describes it: "Mosheh lifted up his rod toward the ...
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 ...
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 wi...
Moses and Aaron walked out of the palace, past the gates, into the suburb of the city. And there, in the open, Moses did exactly what he had promised. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on...
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...
"Lift up thy hand over the land of Mizraim for the locust, that he may come up over the land of Mizraim, and destroy every herb of the earth, whatsoever the hail hath left" (Targum...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 10:13) describes the delivery mechanism with quiet care. "Mosheh lifted up his rod over the land of Mizraim, and the Lord brought an east wind...
"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, an...
The Lord instructs Moses to bring the ninth plague at an unusual hour. "Lift up thy hand towards the height of the heavens," the Lord says (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 10:2)1...
There is a grief so total it sets a boundary in time. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 11:6) frames the final plague not only as a wound inflicted but as an unrepeatable event. Mi...
The strangest detail in the tenth plague is not what happens, but what does not. On the night when all of Mizraim wails, no dog in Israel so much as growls. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan ...
Some of the most famous images of Passover — the belted tunic, the shoes on the feet, the staff in the hand — were never meant to continue. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:11)...
Scale matters in apocalyptic theology. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:12) opens the heavens over Mizraim and reveals something the plain verse leaves hidden: the Lord descend...
Some of the geographic details in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan are staggering. On (Exodus 12:31), the Targum pauses to describe the map. The border of Mizraim extended four hundred phars...
The most famous number in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's account of the Exodus is seven. On (Exodus 12:37), as Israel moves from Pilusin (Pelusium) toward Succoth, one hundred thirty tho...
The first matzah was not baked in an oven. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:39) says that Israel divided the unleavened dough they had brought out of Mizraim — the same dough t...
The obligation to tell the Pesach story to the next generation is compressed into a single sentence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:8). The Aramaic reads: "thou shalt instr...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:18) takes a quiet verse and fills it with multiplication. The Hebrew says simply that Israel went up from Egypt. The Targum adds: "every on...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:21) watches a miracle change its posture. By day the "glory of the Shekinah of the Lord" went before Israel in a column of cloud to lead th...
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"—gapi...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:9) pictures a scene the Hebrew leaves blank. While Pharaoh's chariots thunder toward them, what is Israel doing? The Targum says they are g...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:10) splits the scene at the Sea of Reeds into two simultaneous acts of worship. Behind Israel, Pharaoh has arrived at the camp and sees the...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:13) breaks Israel into four factions at the edge of the sea. Not "the people" united, but four parties, each with its own plan. The first s...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:14) finishes the fourfold answer from the verse before. Two parties still need their reply: the fighters and the screamers. To the company ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:15) catches a surprising reprimand. Moses is standing on the shore praying. God interrupts him: "Why standest thou praying before Me?" It i...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:19) watches a careful choreography. The Angel of the Lord, who had been leading Israel from the front, suddenly moves. He goes behind them....
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:20) describes the strangest cloud in the Torah. It comes between the camp of Israel and the camp of the Mizraee, and it has two sides simul...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:21) loads Moses's staff with cosmic freight. This is not a shepherd's walking stick. It is the great and glorious rod which was created at ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:22) gives the sea-splitting a measurement. The Torah says the waters were "a wall on their right and on their left." The Targum specifies: ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:24) picks a very specific moment for the Egyptian catastrophe. It happened in the morning watch—and the Targum tells us why that hour matte...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:25) gives the Mizraee a final moment of clarity. Their chariot wheels are broken—or in the Targum's alternate reading, made rough, gouged s...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:27) adds a disturbing line to the drowning. Moses stretches his hand, the sea returns at morning, the Mizraee flee from the oncoming waves—...
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, a...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:30) adds two uncanny words to the aftermath. Israel, safe on the far shore, looks back and sees the Mizraee—dead and not dead—cast upon the...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:31) records the moment Israel becomes a nation of faith. They have just watched the mightiest army in the world drown. Now they "feared bef...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:2) turns a line from the Song at the Sea into a vision of impossible witnesses. "This is our God, who nourished us with honey from the rock...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:3) softens a hard Hebrew line. The Torah reads "Adonai ish milchamah"—the Lord is a man of war. The phrase is startling. Is God really a "m...
When Israel stood dripping on the far shore of the Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds, they sang of a hand. Not a sword, not an army, not even an angel. A hand. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (an ...
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 Hebrew of the Song of the Sea says the waters "piled up." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives us a different picture entirely, more vivid and more strange: For by the Word from before...
The Song of the Sea reaches its highest note with a question: Who is like Thee among the exalted gods, O Lord, who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing won...
The Song of the Sea contains a strange prayer. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it: Through the power of Thy mighty arm, let the terrors of death fall upon them, let them be silent a...
The Hebrew text of (Exodus 15:19) only tells us that the horses of Pharaoh went into the sea and the waters returned. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds an almost Edenic detail that trans...
