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The Torah says Jacob sent Joseph from the Valley of Hebron. The word valley — emek — also means depth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:14) pounces on the double meaning. Jaco...
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 conspiracy speech of Joseph's brothers, preserved in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:20), ends with a sentence that is, in its own dark way, one of the most revealing lin...
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 Torah says Jacob refused to be comforted and declared he would go down to the grave mourning. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:35) adds a heartbreaking line the Hebrew onl...
The Targum sees Tamar at a moment of ruined expectation. Judah had promised her his youngest son, Shelah, after her two husbands had died in sequence. She waited. She waited longer...
The Aramaic preserves two small words that change a life. Judah, standing at the place of judgment with his own seal, mantle, and staff in front of him, does not argue. He says: Tz...
The midwife does something quick and symbolic. As Tamar's twins are being born, one child stretches out a hand from the womb, and the midwife binds it with a scarlet thread, saying...
The second twin pushes his way out ahead of the first, and Tamar — or, in some readings, the midwife — speaks words that the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears as prophecy. With what gre...
The Targum preserves a grammatical peculiarity that the Sages loved. They dreamed a dream, both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man his own dream, and the interpreta...
The butler and baker give Joseph the standard complaint of prisoners in an ancient city. They have dreamed, and there is no court interpreter available in their cell. The Targum pr...
This is one of the most daring glosses in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The chief butler has told Joseph about a vine with three branches, ripening into grapes that he pressed into Phara...
Joseph's promise to the butler is both specific and ordinary. At the end of three days the memory of thee will come before Pharoh and he will lift up thy head with honour, and rest...
The Targum gives the baker's dream two readings, the way it gave the butler's dream two readings. This is its interpretation. The three baskets are the three enslavements with whic...
On the third day, as Joseph had said, the prophecy lands. The Targum reports it with ceremonial quietness. It was on the third day, the nativity of Pharoh that he made a feast to a...
The Targum gives us the theological architecture of Pharaoh's sleepless morning. In the morning his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called all the magicians of Mizraim and all...
The Targum preserves one of the great theological statements in Genesis. And Joseph answered Pharoh, saying, (It is) without me; it is not man who interprets dreams: but from befor...
Pharaoh watched something impossible in his dream. Seven gaunt cows swallowed seven fat ones whole, and when it was done, the thin cows looked exactly as wretched as before. No bul...
When Joseph stood before Pharaoh, he did not hedge. The seven wasted cattle and the seven thin ears scorched by the east wind were not two dreams but one, doubled for emphasis. Tar...
The words are almost shocking in their starkness. After seven years of surplus, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:30) warns that the coming famine will "make all the plenty tha...
Joseph named his second son Ephraim, from the Hebrew root meaning to be fruitful, to increase. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:52) preserves Joseph's explanation with a remar...
The instant they bowed, he remembered. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:9) reports it without fanfare: "Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed of them." The sheaves and t...
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...
When Joseph and Benjamin finally embrace, their tears do not flow for the reasons we expect. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the verse as prophecy. "He bowed himself upon his brother ...
The kisses Joseph gives his brothers are not only affection. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's reading, they are grief in advance. "And he kissed all his brethren, and wept over them, be...
The brothers arrive in Canaan. They find their father. They deliver the news. And Jacob cannot hear it. "They declared to him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and is ruler over all th...
Words did not persuade Jacob. But the wagons did. "They told him all the words of Joseph which he had spoken to them. And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to bring him,...
Jacob pauses at Be'er Sheva on his way to Egypt. He offers sacrifices. He waits. He listens. And the Holy One speaks to him in a night vision. "He said, I am God, the God of thy fa...
A dying man does not waste his last gestures. When Jacob gathered the strength to bless his grandsons, he did something strange with his hands. Menasheh, the firstborn, stood on hi...
Joseph ran Egypt. He managed granaries, read dreams, survived prison, and fed a continent through seven years of famine. He knew how things were supposed to be done. So when he wat...
When Joseph tried to move his father's hand, the old man answered with a phrase that has echoed for centuries. "I know, my son, I know" (Genesis 48:19). The doubling is not a stamm...
A blessing that divides is still a blessing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the Hebrew's terse curse-on-anger and reveals its surgical logic. "If they dwell together, no king nor rul...
(Genesis 49:10) is the verse that launched a thousand Jewish hopes. The Hebrew is cryptic: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah... until Shiloh come." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan wi...
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...
There will be false redeemers. Joseph knows this. Before he closes his eyes, he hands his children a test. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis (50:25) expands his oath dramatical...
Pharaoh woke up sweating. In his sleep he had seen a balance. On one pan, all the land of Mizraim — the pyramids, the treasuries, the Nile itself, the whole weight of an empire. On...
Why was Pharaoh's daughter in the river that morning? The Hebrew says simply: "to bathe." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:5) has a different answer — and it is startling. "...
"And the child grew, and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter, and he was beloved by her as a son; and she called his name Mosheh, Because, said she, I drew him out of the water of th...
The blow did not come first. The vision did. "And Mosheh turned, and considered in the wisdom of his mind, and understood that in no generation would there arise a proselyte from t...
"And when it was seen before the Lord that he turned to look, the Lord called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Mosheh, Mosheh! And he said, Behold me." The Targum Pseudo...
Moses has asked for a sign. God gives him a sign stranger than any wonder. "But He said, Therefore My Memra shall be for thy help; and this shall be the sign to thee that I have se...
"And Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I will go to the sons of Israel, and say to them, The Lord God of your fathers hath sent me to you: and they will say to me, What is His Na...
"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...
"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...
At the burning bush, the Holy One does not merely announce a rescue. He swears it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase preserved alongside the Torah, renders the divine ...
Here is a difficult teaching: the Holy One tells Moses the outcome before the negotiation begins. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it with unsettling clarity: it is manifest before Me t...
