2,569 texts · Page 37 of 54
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...
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 Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he did not send him alone. He sent him with a promise sealed by an oath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens the moment: the God...
The servant has arrived. He is standing at the well outside the city of Nachor, and he has to figure out, in a single afternoon, which woman at that well is meant to become the mot...
There is a phrase in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan that can stop you in your tracks. "And it was in that little hour, while he had not ceased to speak, that, behold, Rivekah came forth" (...
Some blessings are said with eyes closed. This one was said with eyes wide open. The servant has just discovered that the girl who watered his ten camels is also the grand-niece of...
When Eliezer retells the story to Laban and Bethuel, he quotes Abraham directly. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:40) preserves the quote exactly as Abraham had spoken it: "Th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:43) gives us something the Torah rarely does. A narrator narrating himself. Eliezer is now sitting at Laban's table, and he is walking his hos...
The servant keeps circling this moment. He circles it because he cannot get over it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:45) has him tell Laban's household: "I had not yet finish...
Some blessings are thank-you notes. This one is a map. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:48) preserves the servant's second act of worship at the fountain. "And I bowed and wor...
One verse, a whole liturgy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:63) translates the Hebrew word la-suach — which can mean "to meditate" or "to wander" — as something specific: Isa...
Twenty years of marriage and no child. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:21) says Isaac did not pray in his tent, did not pray in his field, did not pray at the local altar. He...
Rebekah is pregnant at last — and the pregnancy is not gentle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:22) describes the twins inside her pressing against each other like men at war....
The treaty is signed in the morning. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a detail the Hebrew only whispers. "He broke off from the bridle of his ass, and gave one part to them for a te...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the most quoted lines in all of Genesis. Isaac, blind and suspicious, draws Jacob near, touches him, and says, "This voice is the voice ...
The blessing Isaac pours over Jacob is compact, poetic, and nearly liturgical. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it in solemn Aramaic. "Therefore the Word of the Lord give thee of...
The Torah says only that Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran (Genesis 28:10). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses to let the sentence stay that quiet. It unpacks the day into...
The Torah says Jacob came upon a place and lay down because the sun had set (Genesis 28:11). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot read that verse without shouting. It was not just any...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 28:15) renders a line that changes how you read Jacob's exile. God does not merely promise Jacob that He will be with him. God says: My Word ...
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....
Jacob's vow at Bethel is, in the plain Torah text, a conditional prayer: if God keeps me and feeds me, then the Lord will be my God (Genesis 28:20–21). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
The Torah calls Leah's eyes rakkot — tender, soft, weak (Genesis 29:17). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reframes the entire verse. Her eyes were moist from weeping and praying before t...
Leah's second son is Simeon, whose name comes from the Hebrew shama, "He heard" (Genesis 29:33). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan extends her words into another layer of prophecy. She na...
With her third son, Leah reaches for a new hope. This time, she thinks, Jacob will at last be yilaveh — attached — to her (Genesis 29:34). So she names the child Levi, from the roo...
The fourth son is Judah, from the root hoda'ah, "thanksgiving" (Genesis 29:35). Leah speaks one of the most remarkable lines in the entire matriarchal record: This time will I give...
Leah had four sons. Rachel had none. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:1) preserves the raw edge of her suffering. Rachel was envious of her sister. The Aramaic does not hi...
The Torah says Jacob's anger burned against Rachel (Genesis 30:2). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps the heat of the verb. The anger of Jakob was strong against Rahel. Why was he an...
The second son born through Bilhah is named Naphtali, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears in the name a principle of Jewish spiritual life. Rachel says: With affliction afflicted ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:21) preserves one of the most startling moments in the entire tribal genealogy. Originally, says the Aramaic tradition, the baby in Leah's...
After years of infertility, the Torah says God remembered Rachel (Genesis 30:22). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan expands the verb. The remembrance of Rachel came before the Lord, and t...
He called Rahel and Leah out to the field — away from Laban's tents, away from the household's ears — and spoke plainly. I consider the looks of your father, and, behold, they are ...
Laban gathered his kinsmen and chased for seven days until he caught up at Mount Gilead. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan paints the arrival as a contrast too sharp to ignore. Laban had ridd...
Jakob named two patriarchal witnesses in one breath. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and He whom Izhak feareth had been in my help, even now hadst thou sent me awa...
The messengers returned with the news every fleeing brother dreads. We came to thy brother, to Esau, and he also cometh to meet thee, and four hundred chief-warriors with him (Gene...
The moment Jacob heard that Esau was coming with four hundred armed men, he did what his grandfather and father had done before him: he prayed. But notice the opening he chose. He ...
"Save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him." Jacob's plea in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:12) names two things most ancient prayers leave imp...
"But You promised." This is the hinge of Jacob's prayer in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:13). After naming his fears, after invoking his fathers, after shrinking himself into ...
Jacob knew Esau would ask three questions, so he wrote the answers in advance. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the briefing given to the first servant in the caravan (Genesis 32:1...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the wrestling angel a confession that the plain text never imagined (Genesis 32:27). When dawn came, the angel pleaded: "Let me go, for the column of t...
"And he himself went over before them, praying and asking mercy before the Lord; and he bowed upon the earth seven times, until he met with his brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ge...
"Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar unto Eloha, who revealed Himself to you in your flight from before Esau your brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gene...
"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 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...
"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...
When Jacob returned to Bethel — the very stones where he had dreamed of the ladder decades earlier — he did not simply set up a marker and move on. He raised a pillar of stone on t...
This is the most dramatic verse in the whole chapter, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacted in Eretz Yisrael in the early common era) has pulled the curtain all the way back. Ta...
The Targum supplies the theological punchline the Torah leaves whispered. Because Joseph had withdrawn from the mercy that is above, and had put his confidence in the chief butler,...
Jacob blesses his sons with a breaking voice. "God the Almighty give you mercies before the man," he prays, "that he may release to you your other brother, and Benjamin" (Genesis 4...
