5,112 texts · Page 76 of 107
When Israel enters the Land, the Torah expects a specific kind of work — not only settlement, but demolition. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:24) commands: Thou shalt n...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:25) gives a promise that ties worship to health: you shall do service before the Lord our God and He will bless the provision of thy foo...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:31) maps Israel's inheritance: I will set thy boundary from the sea of Suph, to the sea of the Philistaee, and from the desert unto the ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:33) gives a final warning before the conquest: Thou shalt not let them dwell in thy land, lest they cause thee to err, and to sin before...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:3) describes the extraordinary moment before the covenant is sealed: Mosheh came and set before the people all the words of the Lord, an...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:7) records the moment the covenant was sealed: Mosheh took the Book of the Covenant of the Law and read before the people; and they said...
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 plain Hebrew of (Exodus 24:12) reads simply that God promised Moses the tablets of stone, the Torah, and the commandment. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot leave it that spare....
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 ...
When the Holy One commanded Israel to contribute materials for the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the instruction could have been simple taxation. Every household owes ...
The construction of the Mishkan is described in Exodus 26 with a catalog of measurements and materials that reads, on the surface, like an architect's invoice. Ten curtains of fine...
The robe of the high priest rang when he walked. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 28:34) gives a specific count: a golden bell, then a pomegranate of hyacinth and crimson, alt...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 29:30) legislates how the high priesthood is passed on. For seven full days, the son who rises after his father wears the vestments and enters...
When God told Moses that every counted Israelite must give a half-shekel, Moses did not know what a half-shekel looked like. The coin did not yet exist in any earthly mint. So, Tar...
The recipe for the holy anointing oil is exact and extravagant: five hundred minas of myrrh, two hundred and fifty of sweet cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of sweet calamus, five h...
The spices were weighed. The oil was gathered from the twelve tribes. But the mixture itself required something the Torah calls "the work of the perfumer." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan p...
Bezalel of Judah was the master artisan of the Mishkan. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the Torah's insistence that he did not work alone. God appointed with him Oholiab bar A...
The Mishkan was about to be built. Artisans had received the Spirit of wisdom. Materials were being gathered. And then, in the middle of the construction commands, God paused and s...
The Hebrew Torah commands Israel to keep the Sabbath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds three words that change the flavor entirely: Israel shall keep the Sabbath "to perform the delight...
When Moses came down from Sinai, he was carrying something that did not come from earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the tradition with striking specificity: God gave to Moses...
The timeline is what makes the sin unbearable. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves God's charge with its full sting: "Quickly have they declined from the way which I taught them in Si...
This is one of the most haunting scenes in all of Jewish literature. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it in its full strangeness: Moses approached the camp, saw the calf and the in...
The people took off the ornaments they had received at Sinai. What happened to them? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, answers with a detail the plain te...
After the calf, Moses pitched his personal tent far from the people. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives us the exact distance and what happened ther...
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...
Moses pressed further. How will it be known, he asked, that Israel has truly found favor before God? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives his answer a...
After the intercession, the mercy, and the glimpse of the tefillin knot, the Lord gave Moses a practical command that would take him back up Sinai a second time. Targum Pseudo-Jona...
The morning after receiving the command, Moses did not delay. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives us the pre-dawn discipline of the prophet. "He hewe...
The Thirteen Attributes continue with a ledger of divine bookkeeping that tips heavily toward mercy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives the second h...
Part of the renewed covenant included a specific military promise. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, lists them by name. "Observe that which I command yo...
Having promised to drive out the six nations, God gave Moses a warning about the mistake that would undo everything. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, re...
God extended the warning about treaties into a warning about tables. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, renders the progression clearly. "Lest you strike ...
The renewed covenant included a reminder of the annual rhythm that would shape Jewish life forever. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, preserves the comma...
Of all the animals in the ancient Israelite household, the donkey occupied a strange, liminal place. It was not kosher, yet it was precious. It carried burdens, plowed fields, and ...
The Jewish year moves with the grain. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 34:22) marks two hinges of that turning wheel: the feast of weeks at the first of the wheat harvest, and the...
The Passover sacrifice in the Temple had an exact choreography, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 34:25) preserves its two ironclad rules. First: you may not slaughter the korb...
The Torah's cryptic warning not to boil a kid in its mother's milk (Exodus 34:26) becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, something much more expansive — and much more alarming. The Ta...
There is a moment on Sinai when God tells Moses to write. Not to remember, not to transmit orally, not to carve into stone alone — but to write. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 3...
The number forty runs through the Torah like a drumbeat. Forty days of flood in Noah's time. Forty years in the wilderness. And here, in (Exodus 34:28) as preserved by Targum Pseud...
It is a small verse, easy to read past, but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:1) marks a turning point. Moses gathers all the congregation of the sons of Israel, and says to the...
The Sabbath is called menucha — rest — but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:2) makes clear it was never optional. The verse commands six days of work, then on the seventh day t...
Why five curtains on one side and six on the other? The Torah simply gives the numbers (Exodus 36:16). But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan offers a staggering interpretation: he joined five...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 39:33) does something the plain Hebrew text does not. It tells us where, exactly, the finished tabernacle was brought. Not to a random tent. Not t...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:5) refuses to let a single detail of the sanctuary pass without meaning. The golden altar of incense is to be placed before the ark of the test...
Most retellings of the golden calf stop at the moment Moses hurled the tablets to the ground and shattered them at the base of Sinai. But a remarkable tradition preserved in Targum...
