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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:17) gives Noah his first instruction on the new earth, and it is almost identical to the instruction the Holy One gave Adam in Eden. Bring fort...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:4) delivers one of the oldest and most surprising laws in Torah. Flesh which is torn of the living beast, what time the life is in it, or that ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:23) captures one of the quiet, careful acts of love in Torah. After Noah has fallen asleep in the shame of the wine, Shem and Japhet took a man...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:11) adds a twist no one reading the plain Hebrew would expect. From that land went forth Nimrod, and reigned in Athur, because he would not be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:26) hides one of the loveliest details in the whole genealogy. Joktan begat Elmodad, who measured (or lined) the earth with lines; and Shaleph...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:14) delivers one of the boldest numeric readings in the Aramaic tradition. The Hebrew Bible says Abram armed three hundred and eighteen traine...
After tithing to Shem-Malkizedek, Abram turns to the other king on the race-course — the king of Sodom — and refuses him. (Genesis 14:22) records the oath, and Targum Pseudo-Jonath...
After Abraham routed the four kings and rescued his nephew Lot, the king of Sedom came out to meet him with an offer that looked generous and was actually a trap. Take the spoil, t...
Two Hebrew words make a whole theology: and he believed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:6) unpacks them with Aramaic precision, and the unpacking is worth the effort. He bel...
Once the pieces were laid out, something ugly came down. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:11) calls it plainly: idolatrous peoples, like unclean birds, descending on the sacri...
Thirteen years pass between chapters. When the Lord returns to Abraham, He speaks a name He has not yet used in Genesis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:1) keeps it in its or...
(Genesis 17:23) is the verse in which Abraham stops listening and starts doing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the urgency the Hebrew encodes: Abraham took Ishmael his son,...
Why did God decide to let Abraham in on the destruction of Sodom? The Targum answers with one Aramaic word: chasidutha — piety, devotion, loving-kindness. His chasidut, the Targum ...
The bargain continues. Abraham has offered fifty — ten righteous in each of the five plain-cities. Now, in (Genesis 18:28), he tries a different tactic. "Perhaps of the fifty innoc...
Evening falls over Sedom, and two angels arrive. The Hebrew of (Genesis 19:1) says Lot was sitting "in the gate of Sedom." The Targum catches a detail the plain reading hides. "Two...
"Turn now hither," Lot says to the two angels, "and enter the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet" (Genesis 19:2). The angels refuse. "No; for in the street we wil...
Lot continues his nervous negotiation in (Genesis 19:20). "Behold, now, I pray, this city, it is a near habitation, and convenient to escape thither; and it is small, and the guilt...
(Genesis 19:29) gives the whole Sodom episode its underlying machinery in a single sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it plainly. "And it was when the Lord destroyed the c...
(Genesis 20:5) continues Abimelech's defense: "Did he not tell me, She is my sister? and did not she also say, He is my brother? In the truthfulness of my heart and the innocency o...
God answers Abimelech in (Genesis 20:6), and the Targum's rendering is extraordinary. "And the Word of the Lord said to him in a dream, Before Me also it is manifest that in the tr...
When the angel finally calls from heaven, the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:17) gives the reason out loud: for the righteousness' sake of Abraham. Ishmael lives not beca...
A king with a general at his side walks out to the tent of a stranger. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:22), Abimelech and Phikol, chief of his host, come to Abraham with a...
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...
This is the most astonishing verse in the Akeidah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:10), Isaac is the one who speaks. He does not beg. He does not flee. He instructs his fa...
The voice from heaven arrives just in time. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:12), the Aramaic renders the command in its sharpest possible form: Stretch not out thy hand up...
Watch how the men of Hebron address the grieving widower. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:6), the Hittite elders say to Abraham: Great before the Lord art thou among us, i...
Ten camels left Beersheba with a mission no caravan had ever carried before. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:10) notes something most readers breeze past: "all the goodly tre...
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...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns (Genesis 24:31) into a confession. Laban greets the servant with the warmest possible words — "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord" — and then lets slip ...
This is one of those verses where the Targum tells you a whole murder plot the Torah never mentions. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:33) says the meal set before Eliezer was ...
Given permission to speak, Eliezer opens with a sentence that is not small talk. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:35) has the servant list the blessings God has poured on Abra...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:8) records the death of Abraham in a phrase so compact it can be read in five seconds and pondered for a lifetime. "Abraham expired, and died ...
This is one of the Targum's most surprising explanations. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:11) asks the question the Torah leaves hanging: why, in all the final chapters of his life,...
The second twin emerged differently. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:26) gives the detail plainly: "Afterward came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on the heel of Esa...
The Torah keeps its genealogies lean, but they are never decorative. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:13) records the names of Ishmael's firstborn children: "Neboi, and Arab, ...
Two wells dug, two wells contested. The third well, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us, was different. "For that they did not contend as formerly, and he called the name of it (Ra...
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...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a detail the plain Hebrew only implies. "And when Izhak went forth from Gerar the wells dried up, and the trees made no fruit; and they felt that it...
It is a rare thing in the Torah — a gentile king confessing, in plain terms, that he has seen God at work. But that is exactly what Abimelech does. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan recor...
The request Abimelech makes of Isaac is almost humble. "Lest thou do us evil. Forasmuch as we have not come nigh thee for evil, and as we have acted with thee only for good, and ha...
The promise to Jacob at Bethel scales. From a single man sleeping on stones, the Word of God opens outward: sons as many as the dust, spreading west, east, north, and south (Genesi...
The morning after the wedding, Jacob discovered that the bride under the veil had been Leah, not Rachel (Genesis 29:25). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains how the deception had b...
There is an old phrase Jakob quietly used against his father-in-law: the Lord hath blessed thee at my foot. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it exactly (Genesis 30:30). The little ...
The offer Jakob put on the table sounded like a bad deal on purpose. I will pass through thy whole flock today, he said to Laban, and will set apart every lamb streaked and spotted...
Jakob added one more clause to the contract, and it is the most striking line of the whole negotiation. My righteousness shall testify for me tomorrow, when my wages shall be broug...
Laban did not just separate the flocks. He placed three days of walking between them — a buffer wide enough that no marked goat could wander home by accident, no hopeful lamb could...
