5,112 texts · Page 74 of 107
This is the prophecy Rebekah receives in the study house of Shem, and it reframes every story that follows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:23) preserves the oracle with one ...
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 goin...
The blessing Isaac gives Esau, as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it, is a warning and a prophecy woven together. "Upon thy sword shalt thou depend, entering at every place: yet...
When Isaac laid his hands on Jacob a second time, this time with full knowledge of whom he was blessing, he called down the name by which the patriarchs had always known the Holy O...
Before Jacob left Beersheba for Haran, Isaac did something that could not be undone. He transferred the blessing of Abraham — the promise of land, seed, and covenant — from father ...
Esau was watching. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 28:6) lingers on what he noticed: not only that Isaac blessed Jacob, but that Isaac sent Jacob to Padan Aram with a very s...
The fifth son of Leah is Issachar, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:18) gives his name a remarkable explanation. Leah says, The Lord hath given me my reward, for that ...
After Issachar, Leah bears Zebulun, the sixth son of her own womb. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:20) gives his name a meaning that becomes a pillar of Jewish economic e...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws — the prohibition aga...
"And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and sojourned there the twelve months of the year; and he built in it a midrasha, and for his flocks he made booths; therefore he called the name o...
"Then Jacob came in peace with all that he had to the city of Shekem, in the land of Canaan, in his coming from Padan Aram; and he dwelt near the city." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gen...
The Torah says Joseph told his steward to "slaughter an animal and prepare" a meal for his brothers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears more than catering. It hears halacha. "Bring the m...
The banquet is served on three separate tables. Joseph at one. His brothers at another. The Egyptian officials at a third. The Torah notes the separation briefly. Targum Pseudo-Jon...
Pharaoh is specific about the travel arrangements. He thinks of the women. He thinks of the children. He thinks of the honor due an aged patriarch. "Thou, Joseph, shalt appoint for...
When Jacob finally set out to reunite with Joseph, he sent Judah on ahead. The Torah says only that Judah was to "show the way before him to Goshen" (Genesis 46:28). The Targum Pse...
The Torah sums up the family's first years in Egypt in a single line: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen, and they had possessions therein, and grew a...
When Jacob asked Joseph who the two boys standing beside him were (Genesis 48:9), the question was not about identity. Jacob was old and nearly blind, but he recognized his grandso...
(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...
Some tribes fought. Some farmed. Zebulun sailed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the brief Hebrew line in (Genesis 49:13) and gives it a maritime vista. "Zebulon shall dwell upon the ...
In the Hebrew, Issachar is called a "strong donkey bowing under its burden" (Genesis 49:14). The image sounds pastoral — a beast of fields and heavy loads. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
"And He said, Approach not hither, take the shoe from thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is a holy place; and upon it thou art to receive the Law, to teach it to the so...
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...
The fifth and deepest verb of redemption arrives in the next verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with covenantal precision: I will bring you nigh before Me to be a people, a...
The plagues are not only punishment. They are curriculum. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 10:2) records the Holy One's own reason: "In the hearing of thy sons and of thy chil...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 10:23) reveals a secret buried in the ninth plague that the plain Torah only hints at. "No man saw his brother, and none arose from his place ...
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...
Until the night before the Exodus, time belonged to Egypt. The calendar that mattered was the calendar of Pharaoh, its new year set by the flooding of the Nile. Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
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...
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 ...
Some of the most famous images of Passover — the belted tunic, the shoes on the feet, the staff in the hand — were never meant to continue. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:11)...
The law of unleavened bread contains one of the sharpest penalties in the Torah. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:15) says that anyone who eats leavened bread during the seven ...
Passover has two names. The night of deliverance is Pesach. The week that follows is Chag haMatzot — the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:17) preserv...
The laws of Passover refuse the distinction between insider and outsider. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:19) says that whoever eats leaven during the seven days will perish f...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:3) records the speech Moses gave on the morning after the Exodus. The Aramaic phrase from the house of the bondage of slaves stacks up two word...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:9) hears a strange instruction and decodes it into practice. The verse says the deliverance from Egypt shall be "a sign upon your hand, and...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:14) imagines the future. A son, born long after Egypt, looks at his father performing the strange ritual of redeeming a firstborn donkey wi...
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...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:16) closes the tefillin section with a repetition that is not really a repetition. Once again the text says the Exodus must be inscribed an...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 15:22) slips in a phrase that seems geographical but is actually theological: they journeyed three days in the desert, empty of instruction, and f...
At Marah, where the water was too bitter to drink, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what the Hebrew only hints at. Moses prayed, and the Lord showed him the bitter tree of Ardiphne,...
When the grumbling began in the wilderness of Sin, the Holy One responded not with rebuke but with a test. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:4) renders it: Behold, I will cause ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:5) reads the Sabbath instructions for the manna as a halakhic footnote to the whole story: And on the sixth day they shall prepare what they se...
The word manna itself, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells it, was born from a question. The sons of Israel looked at the fine frost on the desert floor and said to one another Man Hu?...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:23) gives us the first explicit teaching of Sabbath cookery in the Torah, and the Targumist relays it with a domestic precision that would be a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:29) transforms a short Hebrew verse into the founding document of the Sabbath's geography: Behold, because I have given you the Sabbath, I gave...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:32) gives us one of the great commandments of Israel's memory: a jar of manna, set aside and preserved, so that later, less fortunate generatio...
