2,245 texts · Page 42 of 47
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line that pulls the whole arc of Genesis together in one verse. The vestments Rebekah puts on Jacob, the Targum tells us, "had formerly been Adam'...
Jacob dreamed, and a ladder stood from earth to heaven (Genesis 28:12). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan fills the rungs with specific traffic. The two angels on the ladder were not anon...
In the Torah, God simply stands beside Jacob in the dream (Genesis 28:13). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adjusts the posture with surgical care. What Jacob saw was not God Himself but...
When Jacob woke from his ladder-dream, he was shaken. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 28:17) spells out what exactly had shaken him. How dreadful and glorious is this place....
"I have seen the look of your face, and it is to me as the vision of the face of your angel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's most startling line to his brother (Genesis 3...
"Put away the idols of the peoples which are among you, which you took from the temple of Shekem, and purify you from the uncleannesses of the slain whom you have, and change your ...
"We will arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto Eloha, who heard my prayer in the day when I was afflicted, and whose Memra was my helper in the way that I ...
"And he built there an altar, and named that place, To God, who made His Shekhinah to dwell in Bethel, because there had been revealed to him the angels of the Lord, in his flight ...
"And the Lord revealed Himself to Jacob again on his return from Padan of Aram, and the Lord blessed him by the name of His Memra, after the death of his mother." Targum Pseudo-Jon...
If the sheaf dream was shocking, the second dream was worse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:9) stays close to the Hebrew: behold, the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars, bo...
In the field outside Shechem, Joseph meets a man who tells him his brothers have moved on to Dothan. The Torah calls him simply a man. The sages identified him as the angel Gabriel...
The moment Jacob examines the bloody coat, something astonishing happens. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:33) gives us a line that reshapes the whole Joseph narrative. Jacob ...
The seating at Joseph's feast is arranged with a precision that should be impossible. The brothers stare at the place cards and cannot account for what they see. "They sat around h...
The Holy One makes Jacob a promise so intimate that the Targum cannot bear to phrase it as mere accompaniment. It phrases it as presence. "I am He who in My Word will go down with ...
In (Genesis 47:31), once Joseph has sworn to bury him in Canaan, Jacob does something cryptic. He "bowed himself upon the bed's head." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan pulls back the cur...
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...
"And He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Izhak, and the God of Jakob. And Mosheh covered his face; for he was afraid to look upon the height of the ...
"And the Lord said unto Mosheh, He who spake, and the world was; who spake, and all things were. And He said, This thou shalt say to the sons of Israel, I AM HE WHO IS, AND WHO WIL...
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...
After the terror at the inn, the reunion at Sinai feels like exhale. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the geography with reverent precision: Aaron came and met him at the mountain ...
The Holy One explains something astonishing to Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the distinction between the revelations: I was revealed unto Abraham, and to Izhak, and to Ja...
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...
Of all the expansions in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, few are as beautiful as the Four Nights passage on (Exodus 12:42). The Aramaic says there are four nights written in the Book of Me...
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 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...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:13) translates the end of the Song of the Sea not as a geographical promise but as a spiritual homecoming: Thou hast led in Thy mercy the peopl...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan transforms the concluding verse of the Song of the Sea into a piece of cosmic architecture: Thou wilt bring them in, and plant them on the mountain of Thy sa...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records God's reason for the coming theophany: "Behold, on the third day I will reveal Myself to thee in the depth of the cloud of glory, that the people...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records the terrifying perimeter drawn around the mountain: "Thou shalt set limits for the people that they may stand round about the mountain, and shalt...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan dates the great revelation with precision: "It was on the third day, on the sixth of the month, in the time of the morning, that on the mountain there we...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the most dramatic images in all of rabbinic tradition: "Moses brought forth the people from the camp to meet the glorious Presence of the ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the theophany with thick sensory detail: "All the mount of Sinai was in flame; for the heavens had overspread it, and He was revealed over it in ...
The mountain trembled because God Himself had come down upon it. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the moment with startling directness: the Lord revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, ...
How did the Ten Words arrive? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes it with cosmic theatre. "The first word, as it came forth from the mouth of the Holy One, whose Name be blessed, ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes each commandment at Sinai the same way — as a living body of fire. The second word traveled exactly as the first. "Like storms, and lightnings,...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan grounds the Sabbath in cosmology. "For in six days the Lord created the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and whatever is therein, and rested on the s...
What does it mean to see a sound? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the strange Hebrew phrase and leans into the miracle. "And all the people saw the thunders, and were turned back,...
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 gives the simple altar law a mystical interior. "An altar of earth ye shall make to My Name, and sacrifice upon it thy burnt offerings and thy sanctified...
God is sending an angel to lead Israel through the wilderness. But this is no ordinary angel. The Targum's warning is severe and strange at the same time. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:1) opens with an unexpected speaker: Michael, the Prince of Wisdom, said to Mosheh on the seventh day of the month, Come up before the L...
When Nadab and Abihu lifted their eyes at Sinai and beheld the glory of the God of Israel, they saw something no prophet had described before. Beneath the divine throne, serving as...
The Targum on (Exodus 24:16) preserves a detail that the plain text rushes past. The glory of the Lord's Shekhinah rested on Mount Sinai, and the Cloud of Glory covered it for six ...
The plain Hebrew of (Exodus 24:17) says that the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. The T...
(Exodus 25:22) contains one of the most intimate promises in the Torah. The Holy One tells Moses that He will meet with him there, above the kapporet, the mercy-seat, between the t...
The most electric line in this chapter of the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is hidden inside a description of a priestly accessory. On (Exodus 28:30), the text explains what the Urim and ...
The Torah says God would meet Israel at the door of the Tent of Meeting. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears that verse and adds one carefully chosen word: Memra. Not simply, "I will meet...
