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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...
One of the most painful verses in the Torah is also one of its shortest. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:6), Abraham lays the wood of the offering on Isaac's shoulder. Fat...
The single most heartbreaking exchange in Genesis is seven words long. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:7), Isaac says abba — my father. Abraham answers ha-ana — I am here....
Stand where the Temple will stand and look down. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:9), the mountain beneath Abraham's feet is not virgin ground. It is the oldest altar in th...
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...
Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:13), the Aramaic adds the detail that places this animal outside or...
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...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not let Rebekah's instruction pass as a simple culinary request. She tells Jacob, "Go now to the house of the flock, and take me from thence two fat...
After the stones were stacked, Jakob did something remarkable. Jakob slew sacrifices in the mount, and invited his kinsmen who came with Laban to help themselves to bread, and they...
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...
Benjamin was the youngest, and Jacob's last blessing might be the most exalted. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the Hebrew "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf" (Genesis 49:27) as a declarati...
The scene is brief, bloody, and extraordinary. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with theological clarity: Zipporah took a stone, and circumcised the foreskin of Gershom her son,...
The resolution is as swift as the crisis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the inn scene with a verse the Hebrew almost whispers: the destroying angel desisted from him. The angel ste...
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...
Pharaoh offers a compromise. Bring your sacrifices inside the land. Don't go anywhere. Moses's answer, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 8:22) renders it, is a lesson in cultura...
Moses's answer to Pharaoh's last offer is one of the most famous lines in Exodus. "Our flocks, moreover, must go with us; not one hoof of them shall remain; for from them we are to...
One of the most useful things a targum does is flag which commandments were meant to last forever and which were meant only for a single moment. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 1...
Some commandments are famous for their grandeur. This one is famous for its neighborliness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:4) addresses a perfectly mundane problem: what if y...
The most dangerous sentence in the Passover story is the one where Israel was told to tie a lamb to a post and wait. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:6) turns those four days o...
The original Passover meal was not symbolic. The bitter herbs on the first seder plate were real bitter herbs, eaten in a real hurry on a real night. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exo...
One reason the first Passover feels archaic to modern readers is that it was archaic even to the people eating it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:9) piles up the restrictions...
Leftovers are rarely a theological problem, but in the Pesach laws they become one. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:10) addresses what to do with any remnant of the lamb that ...
One of the most striking interpretive moves in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan happens quietly on (Exodus 12:13). The verse states that the blood on the doorposts will be a sign for Israel,...
The tool that saved Israel was the humblest plant in the garden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:22) says that each household took a bunch of hyssop, dipped it in the lamb's b...
The name of the Pesach offering is usually translated "the sacrifice of the passing over." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:27) renames it in a way that catches the heart. In t...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:15) gives the father's answer when the son keeps asking. Why the firstborn? Because of one night. "When the Word of the Lord had hardened t...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:13) paints the arrival of the manna with a detail you will not find in the Hebrew: the dew was holy, and it was prepared as a table, round abou...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes a remarkable scene: "Jethro took burnt offerings and holy sacrifices before the Lord, and Aaron and all the elders of Israel came to eat bread ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the simple altar law a mystical interior. "An altar of earth ye shall make to My Name, and sacrifice upon it thy burnt offerings and thy sanctified...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest laws in the Torah. "If thou wilt make an altar of stones unto My Name, thou shalt not build them sculptured; for if thou l...
The harvest is in. The grapes are crushed. The wine has just begun to settle in its jars. The farmer stands over his abundance and feels the old pull of hesitation. Perhaps next we...
A calf is born. A lamb is born. The farmer knows this one is destined for the altar — a firstborn male, dedicated to God from its first breath. What happens in the interval between...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:15) sets the pilgrimage: The feast of unleavened cakes thou shalt keep. Seven days thou art to eat unleavened bread, as I have instructe...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:18) gives the Pesach offering a particular constraint: Sons of Israel My people, while there is leaven in your houses you may not immola...
This single verse holds two of the most important laws in Jewish life — and the Targum layers them tightly together. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:19) says: The first...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:4) describes what Moses built at dawn: Mosheh wrote the words of the Lord, and arose in the morning and builded an altar at the lower pa...
Before Aaron's household held the priesthood, someone else did. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:5) preserves this little-known tradition: Mosheh sent the firstborn of t...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:8) describes the most solemn act of the covenant ceremony: Mosheh took half of the blood which was in the basins, and sprinkled upon the...
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...
(Exodus 28:1) names the first family of Jewish priests. Aharon, brother of Moses, is brought near with his four sons: Nadab, Abihu, Elazar, and Itamar. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan p...
When God commissioned the priestly wardrobe, He did not sketch a uniform. He named eight specific garments, each with a job. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 28:4) lists them ...
The last of the priestly garments was the most private. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 28:43) explains that Aaron and his sons had to wear the fine linen undergarments — the...
Of all the ordination rites, this one is the strangest. Moses slaughtered the second ram, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 29:20) tells us exactly what he did with the blo...
When Moses consecrated Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, a week-long ritual bound them to the altar — daily offerings, daily bread, daily blood. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacte...
Before the altar of the Mishkan could receive Israel's offerings, it had to be made holy itself. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (an Aramaic paraphrase whose expansions preserve tannaitic a...
Seven days of atonement, and then the altar was something else entirely — not a piece of furniture, not a table of stone, but kodesh kodashim, the altar of the Holy of Holies. Targ...
The Torah says God would meet Israel at the door of the Tent of Meeting. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears that verse and adds one carefully chosen word: Memra. Not simply, "I will meet...
