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Rachel finally bore a son. She named him Joseph, from the Hebrew asaph, "to gather away" (Genesis 30:23). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns her naming into a prophecy about a river ...
This is one of the most disturbing explanations in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and it changes how you read Rahel's theft forever. While Laban was away shearing his flock, Rahel stole t...
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...
Laban went tent by tent. First Jakob's, then Leah's, then the tents of the two concubines. Nothing. And he went out from the tent of Leah, and entered the tent of Rahel (Genesis 31...
Rahel sat on the camel's saddle where the idols lay hidden, and when her father entered she said the words that ended the search: Let it not be displeasing in my lord's eyes that I...
The treaty had one more clause. Laban said to Jakob, If thou shalt afflict my daughters, doing them injury, and if thou take upon my daughters, there is no man to judge us, the Wor...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a small, piercing detail from the moment the family bowed before Esau (Genesis 33:7). The handmaids and their children came forward. Leah and her c...
"And the sons of Jacob had come up from the field when they heard. And the men were indignant, and very violently moved, because Shekem had wrought dishonour in Israel in lying wit...
Simeon and Levi answered their father Jacob with a question that has rung through every generation since. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:31) gives them a longer speech than the...
"And Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca, died, and was buried below Bethel, in the field of the plain. And there it was told Jacob concerning the death of Rebecca his mother; and he cal...
The moment Jacob examines the bloody coat, something astonishing happens. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:33) gives us a line that reshapes the whole Joseph narrative. Jacob ...
The Torah says Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. Readers have wondered for centuries: evil in what way? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Gen...
After losing two sons, Judah faced a choice. The custom required his third and last surviving son, Shelah, to marry Tamar and try to raise up the line. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (G...
The Targum sees Tamar at a moment of ruined expectation. Judah had promised her his youngest son, Shelah, after her two husbands had died in sequence. She waited. She waited longer...
The Targum names them precisely: thy seal, and thy mantle, and thy staff which is in thy hand (Genesis 38:18). Tamar did not ask for silver. She asked for the three objects a man o...
The Targum reports the sentence bluntly. Three months after the crossroads, Tamar was known to be with child. The news traveled to Judah, and the Aramaic adds a telling gloss: Is s...
This is the most dramatic verse in the whole chapter, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacted in Eretz Yisrael in the early common era) has pulled the curtain all the way back. Ta...
The midwife does something quick and symbolic. As Tamar's twins are being born, one child stretches out a hand from the womb, and the midwife binds it with a scarlet thread, saying...
The Torah says Pharaoh gave Joseph a wife named Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:45) stops the reader short with a different clai...
The seating at Joseph's feast is arranged with a precision that should be impossible. The brothers stare at the place cards and cannot account for what they see. "They sat around h...
Of all the seventy souls who went down with Jacob into Egypt, one name hides a secret that will echo across centuries. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 46:17) lingers over th...
The plain verse of (Genesis 46:20) simply records that Joseph married Asenath, daughter of Potiphera priest of On, and had two sons — Menasheh and Ephraim. The Targum Pseudo-Jonath...
The Torah counts seventy souls of Jacob's house entering Egypt. Do the math in (Genesis 46:27) and you find sixty-nine. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan closes the gap with one of the st...
In (Genesis 48:7), as he prepares to bless his grandsons, Jacob breaks off to explain to Joseph something that has haunted the family for decades. "Rachel died by me suddenly in th...
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...
Pharaoh woke up sweating. In his sleep he had seen a balance. On one pan, all the land of Mizraim — the pyramids, the treasuries, the Nile itself, the whole weight of an empire. On...
Pharaoh confronts the midwives. Why are you letting the boys live? And Shifra and Puvah — in the Targum's Aramaic, Jokheved and Miriam — give an answer so audacious it borders on t...
The Torah says God made the midwives "houses." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (1:21) tells us exactly what those houses were. "And forasmuch as the midwives feared before the...
The Torah says Jokheved "hid him three months." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:2) does the math. "And the woman conceived and bare a son at the end of six months; and she ...
Three months. That is how long a mother can pretend her baby does not cry. "But she could conceal him no longer, for the Mizraee had become aware of him. And she took an ark of pap...
The princess opens the basket. She does not find a quiet, sleeping infant. She finds a crying baby. "And she opened, and saw the child, and, behold, the babe wept; and she had comp...
"And the child grew, and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter, and he was beloved by her as a son; and she called his name Mosheh, Because, said she, I drew him out of the water of th...
The Torah tells the Midian episode in a sentence. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:21) tells it in a small novel. "But when Reuel knew that Mosheh had fled from before Phara...
The Torah's Hebrew tells the Israelite women to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver, gold, and clothing before the Exodus. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds something unforgettable: ...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps one detail from the Hebrew and clarifies another. Miriam, the sister of Aaron, is called the prophetess. She takes a tambourine, and all the women come...
If Moses's song is a national anthem, Miriam's song, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it, is a moral theorem. She sang to the women: Let us give thanks and praise before the Lord,...
When Amalek attacked, Moses turned to Joshua with instructions that reveal what kind of army Israel would fight with. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records the order: "Choose such men...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan specifies the three gifts that most moved Jethro: "Jethro rejoiced over all the good which the Lord had done unto Israel, and that He had given them mann...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the most surprising details in the entire Sinai narrative: "Moses on the second day went up to the summit of the mount; and the Lord cal...
Among the harder laws of Exodus is the case of the amah ivriyah — the young Hebrew maidservant. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the verse its full protective force. "If these thre...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a heartbreaking case from the civil code. "If men when striving strike a woman with child, and cause her to miscarry, but not to lose her life, t...
A young woman has been seduced. Her future, by the standards of the ancient world, has been altered against her will — and often against her knowledge of what was being taken. What...
There is a warning at the heart of the covenant that has nothing to do with courts. It has to do with a woman weeping in a small room, and a child watching her weep, and no one els...
When Nadab and Abihu lifted their eyes at Sinai and beheld the glory of the God of Israel, they saw something no prophet had described before. Beneath the divine throne, serving as...
When the people demanded a golden idol from Aaron, they had to find gold. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a startling detail not in the plain Hebrew: their wives denied themselves...
When the call went out for Tabernacle offerings, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:22) records a scene the Torah's plain text only hints at: with the men came the women. And the...
