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Adam wakes up and speaks. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:23) gives him a line with an unusual opening: "This time, and not again, is woman created from man."The Targumist is ...
The serpent's opening move is not "you will not die." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:4) sharpens the attack. "In that hour the serpent spake accusation against his Creator, a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 11:1 opens the story of the Tower of Babel with a claim so bold it has echoed through Jewish thought for two thousand years. All the earth was (of...
Read the verse in the Hebrew Bible and you hear only bricks and mortar. But open Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:4) — the expansive Aramaic paraphrase that fills the margins ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:6) preserves a sentence that has given interpreters trouble for centuries. God looks down at the builders of Babel and says: they will not be ...
The plain verse in (Genesis 11:7) says only, Come, let us go down. The plural has troubled readers since antiquity. To whom is God speaking?Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers without h...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:8) does not describe a gentle scattering. It describes a massacre.The Word of the Lord — the Memra, that favorite Targumic circumlocution for ...
The Hebrew Bible plays on words: the city is called Bavel because there the Holy One confused — balal — the tongues of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:9) preserves...
Genesis 19:34 is a verse most readers speed past. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan slows down and lets us hear the elder daughter plan. "And it was the day following, and the elder said to t...
Genesis 19:37, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: "And the elder brought forth a son, and she called his name Moab, because from her father she had conceived. He is the father of the Moaba...
Genesis 19:38, in the Targum's rendering: "And the younger also brought forth a son, and she called his name Bar-Ammi, because he was the son of her father. He is the father of the...
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 of ...
Picture the king of Gerar standing before the stranger who had walked into his court with a wife he called a sister. Abimelech is not shouting. He is stunned. In Targum Pseudo-Jona...
Every family has a story it tells to the outside world. Abraham's was quieter than most. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 20:13, he finally explains to Abimelech why he left th...
A thousand pieces of silver. That is what the king paid — and in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 20:16, the Aramaic paraphrase lingers on what the coins mean. They are a keseiat ...
Listen to how carefully Abimelech phrases his request. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 21:23, the king asks Abraham to swear by the Word of the Lord that he will not act false...
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.Th...
One of the most haunting expansions in the entire Targum is this one. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 22:20, the Aramaic explains how Sarah died: Satana came and told unto Sar...
Listen to how Ephron performs generosity. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 23:11, the Hittite landowner makes his first move: the field I give thee, and the cave which is in it...
Abraham is old, and the question of Isaac's wife must be settled. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 24:2, the Aramaic makes explicit what the Hebrew only hints at: Abraham tells...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 24:43 gives us something the Torah rarely does. A narrator narrating himself. Eliezer is now sitting at Laban's table, and he is walking his hosts...
This is one of the Targum's most humane glosses, tucked into a genealogy verse no one usually stops for. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 25:19 says: "These are the generations of...
Two brothers. Two careers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 25:27 gives the contrast in parallel sentences. Esau grew up a "man of idleness to catch birds and beasts, a man going ...
There is no anger in Abimelech's voice, but there is pain. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records the king calling Isaac and saying, "Nevertheless she is thy wife. Why hast thou said, ...
This is the sentence the rabbis have wrestled with for two thousand years. Jacob, dressed in Adam's garments, stands in front of his blind father and says, "I am Esau thy firstborn...
Isaac's answer to his weeping elder son is one of the saddest sentences in the Torah. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves its resignation with a quiet Aramaic cadence. "Behold, I ...
Between Laban's hot pursuit and his morning confrontation, something happened in a dream that the plain Hebrew text only hints at. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan makes it vivid: an angel c...
Once the angel had clipped his wings, Laban arrived the next morning wearing the mask of a wounded host. Why didst thou hide from me that thou wouldst go, and steal my knowledge, a...
When Laban accused the camp of stealing his teraphim, Jakob answered with a vow that sounds, read in hindsight, like a tragedy spoken aloud. With whomsoever thou shalt find the ima...
For twenty years Jakob had held his tongue. Every shift of wages, every cold look, every whisper from the sons — he had swallowed them all. Now, after the fruitless search, somethi...
"According to these words you must speak with Esau when you find him." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the instruction three times (Genesis 32:20) — first servant, second servant, t...
Hamor and his son Shekem needed to convince the men of their city to undergo mass circumcision — an extraordinary demand. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:21) preserves the sales...
One verse can hide two entire storylines. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 36:12) takes a bare genealogical note and cracks it open to reveal both. The Torah tells us that Timna ...
The Torah calls Joseph a na'ar — a youth — when he brings evil reports about his brothers to their father. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:2) gives that single word a whole b...
The Torah says the brothers hated Joseph and could not speak a word of peace to him (Genesis 37:4). Readers sometimes take this as a character flaw — petty brothers who refused to ...
The brothers heard the dream and exploded. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:8) preserves their two-edged outrage in a single tight sentence. They did not just laugh at Joseph....
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:18) lingers over three words: from afar. The brothers saw Joseph in the distance, long before he arrived. They had time. They had distance. An...
Ten brothers conspired. Ten brothers sold Joseph. Ten brothers dipped the coat in goat's blood. But when it came time to actually bring the coat to their father, Targum Pseudo-Jona...
When Joseph flees, leaving his garment in her hand (Genesis 39:12), Potiphar's wife does not sit in silence. The Targum reports her pivot: she called the men of the house and said,...
The Targum preserves a psychological detail the Hebrew only hints at. The chief baker, when he understood the interpretation of his companion's dream, seeing that he had interprete...
The Targum records the butler's long-delayed memory. There was with us a Hebrew youth, a servant of the chief executioner; and we recounted to him, and he explained the dream to us...
What happens next is one of the great speeches in the Hebrew Bible. Judah steps out of the huddle of brothers and walks directly toward the vizier — the man he still believes is an...
The brothers cannot answer. So Joseph does something astonishing. He invites them closer."Joseph said to his brothers, Come near, I pray, and examine me. And they came near. And he...
Read (Genesis 46:21) in a plain chumash and it looks like a list: Bela, Beker, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Chuppim, Ard — ten sons of Benjamin. But the Targum Pseudo-J...
The Hebrew calls Naphtali "a hind let loose, that giveth goodly words" (Genesis 49:21). The image is a deer sprinting across a mountainside with news. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan names ...
Power draws enemies. Joseph rose from a prison cell to the second throne of Egypt in a single day (Genesis 41:40), and the men he displaced never forgave him. Targum Pseudo-Jonatha...
Dathan's answer is a dagger."Who is he who hath appointed thee a chief man and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, said he, as thou didst the Mizraite? And Mosheh was afraid, ...
The second sign at the burning bush is more disturbing than the first. The serpent was outside Moses' body; the leprosy is on it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the bluntness of ...
