3,491 texts · Page 44 of 73
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:24) adds a detail that quietly reshapes the whole story. The biblical Hebrew simply says Noah awoke and knew what his younger son had done to h...
A genealogy in the Hebrew Bible almost always repays slow reading. The Targumist on (Genesis 11:29) drops a single clause into the list of wives and changes the whole family tree: ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:3) performs one of its most characteristic moves — it drops the future straight into the past. The plain verse says, I will bless those who bl...
The Hebrew Bible in (Genesis 13:14) times the divine address with surgical precision: after that Lot had separated from him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the clause verbatim be...
A military march in (Genesis 14:7) becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, a moment of temporal vertigo. The verse says the kings returned to En-Mishpat, meaning the spring of judgment...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:15) turns Abram's night raid into a double operation with a prophetic shadow. The Aramaic says Abram divided his forces in the night: a part w...
When Abraham asked for confirmation of the promise, the Lord did not give him a speech. He gave him a butchery list. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:9) preserves it exactly. ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:10) gives Abraham the work of a careful butcher and a careful theologian at the same time. He brings the five animals. He divides them down th...
As the sun dipped low over the divided animals, a tardemah fell on Abraham — a deep, prophetic sleep. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:12) uses that sleep to show him the whol...
When the sun went down on the covenant between the pieces, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:17) turns the Hebrew's smoking furnace and flaming torch into something far more vi...
In the wilderness, Hagar meets an angel. And the angel does what angels rarely do — he names a child. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 16:11) keeps the name-meaning the Hebrew en...
The angel does not just name Ishmael. He predicts him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 16:12) lets the prophecy roll out in the open: he shall be like the wild ass among men, hi...
At the spring in the wilderness, Hagar does something that no one in Genesis has done before. She gives God a name. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 16:13) renders her declaratio...
Old names do not drop off quietly. When the Lord tells Abraham that Abram will no longer be his name, He is rewriting a biography that has already lasted ninety-nine years. Targum ...
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...
The night is almost over. The angels have told Lot that the city is finished. (Genesis 19:14) describes his frantic effort to save the only other relatives he has in town. "And Lot...
The action shifts south. Abraham has traveled into the region of Gerar, called Sarah his sister instead of his wife, and the local king Abimelech has taken her into his household. ...
(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...
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...
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...
Once the camels had finished drinking — all ten of them, every last swallow — the servant reached into his pack and took out jewelry. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:22) refu...
The mother and brother gather around Rivekah on the morning she is to leave, and they speak a blessing that the Jewish people have been whispering over their daughters ever since. ...
This is the prophecy Rebekah receives in the study house of Shem, and it reframes every story that follows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:23) preserves the oracle with one ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan catches Isaac mid-thought. "It had been in Izhak's heart to go down to Mizraim," it tells us (Genesis 26:2). The famine has struck. His father went down ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is careful with one phrase above all others — the Memra, the Word of God. Where the Hebrew simply says "I will be with thee and bless thee," the Aramaic ...
The covenant that God first made with Abraham under the night sky is spoken again — this time to Isaac. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the same thunderous promise. "I w...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps the voice of the Holy One personal. "I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for My Word is for thy help, and I will bless thee, and multiply...
When Isaac draws Jacob close and breathes him in, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what the patriarch actually smells. It is not the field. It is not the goats. It is the incens...
The closing line of Isaac's blessing, as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it, reaches beyond Jacob and names two future figures by name. "Let them who curse thee, my son, be accu...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens the timing of the scene to a breath. "It was when Izhak had finished blessing Jakob, and Jakob had only gone out about two handbreadths from Izh...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not let us wonder how Rebekah heard. "The words of Esau her elder son, who thought in his heart to kill Jakob, were shown by the Holy Spirit to Rive...
When Leah named her firstborn Reuben, she said the Hebrew phrase ra'ah Adonai b'onyi — "the Lord has seen my affliction" (Genesis 29:32). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears the phras...
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...
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...
Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, bears Jacob a son whom Rachel names Dan, from the Hebrew din, "judgment" (Genesis 30:6). Rachel says, God has judged me and heard my prayer. The Targum P...
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 ...
Leah names the second son of her handmaid Zilpah Asher, from osher, "happiness" or "praise" (Genesis 30:13). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates the name into a prophecy about th...
Rachel finally bore a son. She named him Joseph, from the Hebrew asaph, "to gather away" (Genesis 30:23). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns her naming into a prophecy about a river ...
The moment Rahel gave birth to Joseph, something shifted in Jakob. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us that the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, settled upon him, and he looked ahead a...
Jakob told his wives the other half of the story — the half no one else had witnessed. At the time when the flocks conceived, that I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream, and, beho...
The voice in the dream named itself. I am Eloha who did reveal Myself to thee at Beth El where thou didst anoint the pillar, and swear the oath before Me (Genesis 31:13). Targum Ps...
Jakob crossed the Pherat and set his face for the mountain of Gilead. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the reader a future-sight camera angle the plain text does not: Jakob saw, by the...
"Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a line the plain text only implies (Genesis 32:29): the new name was given "because you are magni...
After burying Rachel on the road to Ephrath, Jacob kept walking. He pitched his tent in a quiet, unremarkable place — Migdal Eder, the Tower of the Flock, a shepherd's watchtower o...
It is one of the most famous dreams in the Hebrew Bible, and the Targum translates it with surgical calm. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:7) repeats the imagery almost unchan...
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...
When Joseph told his father the dream of the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, Jacob rebuked him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:10) reports the rebuke: What dream is thi...
