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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:17) is the mirror image of Sarah's later laugh at the tent door. Abraham falls on his face. He does not argue out loud. He laughs — wondered, ...
Abraham had asked for Ishmael to be the heir of the promise (Genesis 17:18). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:19) preserves the Lord's answer, and it is not what Abraham reque...
(Genesis 17:20) is the Lord's answer to the previous verse's quiet sadness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with full warmth. Concerning Ishmael I have heard thy prayer. Behold, ...
(Genesis 17:23) is the verse in which Abraham stops listening and starts doing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the urgency the Hebrew encodes: Abraham took Ishmael his son,...
Chapter 18 of Genesis opens with one of the most intimate moments in the Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives it a medical detail the Hebrew leaves implicit. The glory of the Lo...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:2) gives the three visitors at Abraham's tent their heavenly job descriptions. They are angels in the likeness of men, the Targum says, and th...
The Hebrew of (Genesis 18:3) is famously ambiguous. Is Abraham speaking to the angels, or to God? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers with a confident rearrangement. Abraham addresses t...
(Genesis 18:5) in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns a simple meal into a moment of blessing. Abraham will bring bread so that the travelers may strengthen their hearts — and, the Targum...
(Genesis 18:8) contains one of the Torah's most curious moments, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with an almost comic precision. Abraham takes rich cream, milk, and the calf ...
The Hebrew says simply that Sarah was listening at the tent door. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:10) puts a second listener behind her. And Sarah was hearkening at the door ...
(Genesis 18:14) is the Torah's answer to every reader who has ever wondered whether God notices the small disbeliefs of the faithful. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the Hebrew's ha-y...
The three travelers had finished their meal under the terebinths. They rose, and the Targum watches them split off into three different errands. The one who had come to announce a ...
There is a quiet line in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:17) that changes how you read the whole Sodom episode. God speaks, as the Targum puts it, bememra — with His Word — a...
Why did God decide to let Abraham in on the destruction of Sodom? The Targum answers with one Aramaic word: chasidutha — piety, devotion, loving-kindness. His chasidut, the Targum ...
The angels turn. They set their faces toward Sedom. And the Targum on (Genesis 18:22) pauses to tell us what Abraham does in that moment: he "supplicated mercy for Lot, and ministe...
When Abraham begins his famous bargain in (Genesis 18:24), the Hebrew simply says "perhaps there are fifty righteous within the city." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns this into a deta...
Abraham is not tired yet. In (Genesis 18:29) he descends one rung further in his negotiation, and the Targum spells out the logic most translations hide. "Perhaps there may be fort...
At (Genesis 18:30), Abraham's nerve almost breaks. "Let not the displeasure of the Lord, the Lord of all the world, wax strong against me, and I will speak." The Targum is tracking...
By (Genesis 18:31), Abraham is calling God "the Lord of all the world" — ribbon kol alma in the Targum's Aramaic — and apologizing in advance. "Imploring mercy, I have now begun to...
Here is where the bargain ends, and here is where Targum Pseudo-Jonathan slips in the detail most English readers miss. "I implore mercy before Thee! Let not the anger of the Lord,...
Sometimes the purest image of divine mercy in Torah is also the most embarrassing. (Genesis 19:16) in the Targum reads this way. "But he delayed: and the men laid hold on his hand,...
(Genesis 19:29) gives the whole Sodom episode its underlying machinery in a single sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it plainly. "And it was when the Lord destroyed the c...
Lot's arc is almost done. (Genesis 19:30) places him, finally, where the angel originally told him to go in (Genesis 19:17) — the mountain. "And Lot went up from Zoar, and dwelt in...
(Genesis 20:7) is the final piece of God's word to Abimelech in the dream. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: "And now let the wife of the man return; for he is a prophet; he will pray for th...
Picture the king of Gerar standing before the stranger who had walked into his court with a wife he called a sister. Abimelech is not shouting. He is stunned. In Targum Pseudo-Jona...
Every family has a story it tells to the outside world. Abraham's was quieter than most. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 20:13), he finally explains to Abimelech why he left ...
A thousand pieces of silver. That is what the king paid — and in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 20:16), the Aramaic paraphrase lingers on what the coins mean. They are a keseia...
Here is a line that rewards slow reading. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:1), the Aramaic translator takes a short Hebrew verse and opens a window onto a principle the rab...
The newborn in Sarah's arms is laughter made flesh. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:7), she remembers who first carried the promise to her tent: not a man, not a neighbor,...
The biblical verse is blunt. Sarah tells Abraham to cast out the handmaid and her son. But in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:10), the Aramaic adds a sentence that changes ev...
When Abraham hesitates, the Holy One settles it with a line that should be underlined in every copy of the Torah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:12), the Aramaic makes th...
Dawn in the house of Abraham. Bread on a shoulder. A cruse of water tied to a woman's waist. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:14), the Aramaic paraphrase adds a detail the ...
Here is one of the strangest verses in the Targum, and one of the most historically suggestive. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:21), Ishmael grows up in the wilderness of ...
A king with a general at his side walks out to the tent of a stranger. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:22), Abimelech and Phikol, chief of his host, come to Abraham with a...
Listen to how carefully Abimelech phrases his request. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:23), the king asks Abraham to swear by the Word of the Lord that he will not act fal...
A well in the Negev. Seven ewe lambs set apart. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:32), the Aramaic preserves the ancient name of the place — Beira de-Sheva, the Well of the ...
Here is the Targum's most beloved expansion of the patriarchal story. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:33), the Hebrew says Abraham planted a eshel — a tamarisk — in Beersh...
The voice from heaven does not soften what it is asking. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:2), each phrase lands heavier than the last: Take now thy son, thy only one whom t...
The Torah says Abraham took two of his young men. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:3) names them: Eliezer, the faithful servant, and Ishmael, the firstborn son whom Abr...
At the foot of the mountain, Abraham turns to his servants and speaks a sentence every reader has struggled with. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:5), the Aramaic expands t...
One of the most painful verses in the Torah is also one of its shortest. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:6), Abraham lays the wood of the offering on Isaac's shoulder. Fat...
The single most heartbreaking exchange in Genesis is seven words long. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:7), Isaac says abba — my father. Abraham answers ha-ana — I am here....
This is the most astonishing verse in the Akeidah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:10), Isaac is the one who speaks. He does not beg. He does not flee. He instructs his fa...
The voice from heaven arrives just in time. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:12), the Aramaic renders the command in its sharpest possible form: Stretch not out thy hand up...
Before he walks down the mountain, Abraham offers one more prayer. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:14), the Aramaic paraphrase turns the Hebrew's terse place-naming into a...
When the ram has been offered and the knife has been set down, the blessing arrives. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:17), the Aramaic preserves the double Hebrew intensifi...
Something strange happens at the end of the Akeidah. The Torah says Abraham returns to his young men — but does not mention Isaac returning with him. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (...
A wife does not greet her husband at the door. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:2), the Aramaic names what Abraham finds when he comes down from the mountain: Abraham came ...
