3,491 texts · Page 46 of 73
At the burning bush, the Holy One asks Moses to do something that violates every shepherd's instinct. The staff he has carried through decades in Midian has just become a serpent. ...
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...
Once Aaron is appointed the spokesman, the Holy One explains how the chain of communication will actually work. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the threefold structure: thou shalt...
On the road to Egypt, the Holy One issues a warning that has troubled readers for two millennia. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan softens the Hebrew's I will harden his heart into something ...
The confrontation finally arrives. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the opening line with ceremonial weight: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Release My people, that they ma...
Pharaoh's reply is one of the most arrogant utterances in the entire Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes explicit what the Hebrew only implies: The name of the Lord is not made kno...
When Pharaoh refuses, Moses and Aaron press the request with a telling clarification. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves their plea: The Name of the God of the Jehudaee is invoked by...
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 Holy One does not argue with Moses. He simply issues a new set of orders. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the dual commission: the Lord spake with Mosheh and with Aharon, and ...
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, ...
Among the quietest bombshells in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is a single line tucked into a genealogy. Kehath, son of Levi, lived a hundred and thirty-three years, and, the Targum adds,...
When the Torah sums up who stood before Pharaoh to demand Israel's release, it simply says these are they (Exodus 6:27). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 6:27) supplies the titles...
The plain verse says God made Moses as a god to Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1). The phrase has rattled translators for two thousand years. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:1) handles ...
Why did Moses have to meet Pharaoh by the water at sunrise? The plain text only says that Pharaoh went out to the river (Exodus 7:15). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:15) tells...
When Moses delivers the demand at the Nile, the Hebrew has him speak in the name of the God of the Hebrews (Exodus 7:16). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:16) updates the phrase...
Plague five begins with the same message that opened the demands at the Nile. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:1): Thus saith the Lord, the God of the Jehudaee, Emancipate My pe...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:14) preserves a warning that cuts through every illusion Pharaoh ever held. "At this time I will send upon thee a plague from the heavens," ...
It is one of the hardest verses in Exodus. Why didn't the Lord simply strike Pharaoh dead and free the slaves? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:16), the Aramaic paraphrase p...
"Uplift thy hand towards the height of the heavens," the Lord says to Moses (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:2)2), "and there shall be hail on all the land of Mizraim, upon men...
By the eighth plague, the Torah's language has shifted. Before, it was Pharaoh who hardened his own heart. Now, the Lord takes a share of the responsibility. "The Lord spake to Mos...
"They shall fill thy house, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of the Mizraee," the Lord declares through Moses, "(the like of) which neither thy fathers nor thy fo...
"Lift up thy hand over the land of Mizraim for the locust, that he may come up over the land of Mizraim, and destroy every herb of the earth, whatsoever the hail hath left" (Targum...
Moses's reply to Pharaoh's death-threat is magnificently calm — and the Targum reveals why. "Thou hast spoken fairly. While I was dwelling in Midian, it was told me in a word from ...
Moses almost never loses his temper in the written text, but on this night he does. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 11:8) describes him warning Pharaoh that the day is coming whe...
Few verses in the Hebrew Bible have troubled readers as much as the one that says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 11:10) offers a subtle reading: th...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:17) answers a question the Torah only gestures at. Why did God not send Israel by the short coastal road through the land of the Philistine...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:31) records the moment Israel becomes a nation of faith. They have just watched the mightiest army in the world drown. Now they "feared bef...
The Song of the Sea contains a strange prayer. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it: Through the power of Thy mighty arm, let the terrors of death fall upon them, let them be silent a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps one detail from the Hebrew and clarifies another. Miriam, the sister of Aaron, is called the prophetess. She takes a tambourine, and all the women come...
When the people cried out for water at Rephidim, Moses did not simply strike any rock. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan insists on a precise geography: God said, "Behold, I will stand be...
Victory in the Amalek battle came through Joshua, but the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan insists the sword was not his alone. "And Joshua shattered Amalek, and cut off the heads of the str...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan locates Jethro's arrival at Israel's camp with unusual precision: "Jethro the father-in-law of Moses, and the sons of Moses, and his wife came to Moses a...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records one of the most consequential sentences ever spoken by a people: "All the people responded together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we w...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records God's reason for the coming theophany: "Behold, on the third day I will reveal Myself to thee in the depth of the cloud of glory, that the people...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the Sinai prelude with one of the most tender lines in the entire revelation narrative: "The voice of the trumpet went forth, and grew stronger: (...
The mountain trembled because God Himself had come down upon it. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the moment with startling directness: the Lord revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, ...
God's instruction to Moses at Sinai comes with a precise choreography. "Go down, and then ascend, thou and Aaron with thee; but let not the priests or the people directly come up t...
What does it mean to see a sound? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the strange Hebrew phrase and leans into the miracle. "And all the people saw the thunders, and were turned back,...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:1) opens with an unexpected speaker: Michael, the Prince of Wisdom, said to Mosheh on the seventh day of the month, Come up before the L...
The narrative in Exodus 24 troubles the ancient interpreters. Nadab and Abihu, the comely young sons of Aharon, ascended the mountain with the elders, beheld the God of Israel, and...
The Targum on (Exodus 24:16) preserves a detail that the plain text rushes past. The glory of the Lord's Shekhinah rested on Mount Sinai, and the Cloud of Glory covered it for six ...
The plain Hebrew of (Exodus 24:17) says that the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. The T...
The plain verse of (Exodus 24:18) is almost flat. Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain, and he was there forty days and forty nights. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot ...
(Exodus 25:22) contains one of the most intimate promises in the Torah. The Holy One tells Moses that He will meet with him there, above the kapporet, the mercy-seat, between the t...
As Moses descended the mountain, Joshua heard the noise of the camp and could not interpret it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Moses's reply in words of unsettling clarity: "It i...
Aaron kept retelling the story. "They said to me, Make us gods that may go before us. For this Moses, the man who brought us up from Mizraim, is consumed in the mountain, by the fl...
When Moses entered the tabernacle of instruction, the heavens did not stay silent. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives us the scene in its fullness. ...
The Torah says the Lord spoke with Moses "face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, refuses to let the metaphor m...
