4,035 texts · Page 58 of 85
Some tribes fought. Some farmed. Zebulun sailed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the brief Hebrew line in (Genesis 49:13) and gives it a maritime vista. "Zebulon shall dwell upon the ...
In the Hebrew, Issachar is called a "strong donkey bowing under its burden" (Genesis 49:14). The image sounds pastoral — a beast of fields and heavy loads. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
Jacob's blessing of Dan is spare in Hebrew. "Dan shall judge his people." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears a specific future in it. "From the house of Dan there is to arise a man w...
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...
After prophesying Samson's rise, Jacob pauses. The next verse in Genesis 49 is almost a sigh. "For Thy salvation have I waited, O Lord." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan unpacks the grief an...
Gad chose land east of the Jordan. The Hebrew blessing in (Genesis 49:19) puns on the name — gad sounds like gedud, a raiding band. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan expands the pun into a ba...
The Hebrew calls Naphtali "a hind let loose, that giveth goodly words" (Genesis 49:21). The image is a deer sprinting across a mountainside with news. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan names ...
Joseph's blessing is the longest Jacob delivers, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan packs it with detail no translator could resist. "Joseph, my son, thou hast become great and mighty... b...
Power draws enemies. Joseph rose from a prison cell to the second throne of Egypt in a single day (Genesis 41:40), and the men he displaced never forgave him. Targum Pseudo-Jonatha...
Jacob's blessing of Joseph reaches into cosmic language. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves two divine titles worth pausing on. "From the Word of the Lord shall be thy help; and He w...
The ancestral blessings were not universally loved. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan includes a striking aside in Joseph's final benediction. "The blessings of thy father be added to the ble...
Benjamin was the youngest, and Jacob's last blessing might be the most exalted. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the Hebrew "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf" (Genesis 49:27) as a declarati...
The blessings are done. Jacob has said something hard or something heroic about each of his sons — one has lost the birthright, two have been scattered for their rage, one has been...
When the blessings were finished, Jacob turned to the practical. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records his request with the gravity of a last will. "I am to be gathered to my people; bury...
Jacob names the burial site with the precision of a deed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the legal language. "In the cave that is in the Double Field over against Mamre in the la...
When Jacob died, Egypt mourned for seventy days (Genesis 50:3). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains why the Egyptians wept so hard for a foreign patriarch. They were not mourning only ...
Joseph was the second most powerful man in Egypt. He could have ordered the funeral procession with a wave of his hand. Instead, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a curious diplomat...
Joseph's request to Pharaoh hinges on a vow he cannot break. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it simply. "My father made me swear, saying, Behold, I die, in the sepulchre which I hav...
When Pharaoh granted Joseph's request, a procession formed that had no precedent in Hebrew history. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it plainly. "And Joseph went up to bury his fathe...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records a small, telling detail about the funeral caravan. "And all the men of Joseph's house, and his brethren, and his father's household: only their child...
Midway between Egypt and Hebron, the procession stopped. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes the scene. "They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jardena, and the...
When the Canaanite natives saw the Egyptian-Israelite procession mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they did something startling. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it. "They loo...
The funeral was supposed to be solemn. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the wildest scenes in all of midrash instead. "When his sons had brought him into the land of Kenaan, a...
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...
The brothers were terrified. So they did what frightened children do — they invoked the father. "Thus shall you say to Joseph: forgive now the guilt of thy brethren and their sin, ...
Comes the answer. Joseph looks at his brothers — these old, frightened men — and finally explains the awkward meal. "You indeed imagined against me evil thoughts, that when I did n...
The Torah records a small family scene: "And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation; also the sons of Makir the son of Menasheh were born on Joseph's knees" (Genesis...
Joseph is dying. He gathers his brothers — what is left of them — around the bed and speaks words that will hover over the next four hundred years like a lamp burning in a long cor...
"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...
"And their cry was heard before the Lord, and before the Lord was the covenant remembered which He had covenanted with Abraham, with Izhak, and with Jakob." The Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
"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 again unto Mosheh, Thus shalt thou speak to the sons of Israel: The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Izhak, and the God of Jakob, hath sent me...
"Go, and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, The Lord God of your fathers hath appeared unto me, the God of Abraham, Izhak, and Jakob, saying, Remembering, I have remem...
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...
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...
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 Exodus closes the loop that began with Abraham. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the full covenantal claim: I will bring you into the land which I covenanted by My Word to give...
In the middle of the Exodus narrative, the Torah pauses for a genealogy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with the ceremonial weight of a formal record: These are the heads of t...
The Torah lists Shimeon's sons with a single odd note about the last one: Shaul, born of a Canaanite woman (Exodus 6:15). The Aramaic paraphrase of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodu...
The Torah gives Levi's lifespan as a hundred and thirty-seven years (Exodus 6:16), but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a single clause that changes the entire feel of the verse. Levi, ...
The plain verse says only that Amram married Jokeved, fathered Aharon and Moses, and lived a hundred and thirty-seven years (Exodus 6:20). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 6:20) a...
The Torah says Elazar son of Aharon married a daughter of Putiel, and she bore Phinehas (Exodus 6:25). Who is this Putiel that the Torah mentions nowhere else? Targum Pseudo-Jonath...
One of the great numerical puzzles of the Torah is solved openly by Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:40). The Hebrew says Israel lived in Mizraim for four hundred thirty years....
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:41) continues the chronological reconstruction begun the verse before. Thirty years passed between the Covenant Between the Pieces and the birt...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:5) lists the peoples whose land is being promised: the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The Aramaic keeps the old Torah ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:19) tells a story the Hebrew only hints at. Moses, on the night Israel leaves Egypt, is not packing or leading. He is recovering a body. Jo...
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 ...
