This post is a continuation of a previous post discussing the many variations in the book of Genesis between the traditional Hebrew text and the Aramaic Targums. Click here to read the first post.
The Book of Genesis forms the foundation for the Hebrew Bible, establishing key themes and narratives that reverberate throughout. This text has been subject to remarkable and interesting reinterpretations and re-readings over the centuries, as reflected in the Aramaic translations and commentaries known as the Targums. Three Targums in particular—Targum Onkelos, Targum Neofiti, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan—provides valuable insight into how parallel and later traditions, including Christian and Rabbinic perspectives, also developed.
The Targums offer insight into how early readers and scholars grappled with problematic passages and filled gaps in the biblical narrative. For instance, the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum expands on Genesis 11:7-8, incorporating details about the “seventy angels” involved in confounding human language at Babel. Neofiti offers an unexpected detail about God saving Abraham from the “furnace of fire” of the idolatrous Chaldeans. And Onkelos interprets Jacob as a “minister of the schoolhouse” to explain his dwelling in tents.
The Targums also reflect early efforts at harmonization, as when Pseudo-Jonathan stresses Abraham's wholehearted obedience at the binding of Isaac, adding language that echoes the Shema in Deuteronomy. Throughout, the Targums demonstrate the creativity and innovation of interpreters seeking new meaning in ancient scriptures. Their elaborate embellishments paved the way for Midrash and later mystical exegesis.
This intertextual relationship reveals the dynamic nature of biblical literature, as communities rework and reframe old stories to address new circumstances. Comparing the Hebrew text with its Aramaic translations provides a window into how its recipients, both Christian and Jewish, continually re-read their foundational scriptures. What other insights might emerge from studying these literary variants across languages? Can these perspectives assist as we read, and re-read, these narratives today?
Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other … So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. (Genesis 11:7-8)
The Lord said to the seventy angels which stand before Him, Come, we will descend and will there commingle their language, that a man shall not understand the speech of his neighbor. And the Word of the Lord was revealed against the city, and with Him seventy angels, having reference to seventy nations, each having its own language, and thence the writing of its own hand ... (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 11:7-8)1
The eight verses in Genesis 11 recounting the “confusion of tongues” at Babel provide few specific details about this pivotal moment in the text’s primordial history. God simply descends, somehow “confuses the language” of the united humanity, and scatters them across the earth. Yet in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan’s retelling, this terse account becomes a much more vivid, elaborately expanded narrative.
Where the Hebrew text mentions only God descending, Pseudo-Jonathan specifies that God was joined by “seventy angels” who assist in the dispersal of languages and nations. As scholars like Darrell Hannah have detailed, this motif of seventy angelic patrons stems from an extra-biblical legend widespread in Second Temple era texts like Jubilees.2 There, we find an early reference to divine messengers involved at Babel, though without the specificity of their number or exact duties. Pseudo-Jonathan weaves these threads together into a unified tale, interpolating contemporary angelic lore to address the conspicuous absence of any actors besides God in Genesis 11.
By deputizing seventy angels to dispense the languages, the Targum neatly incorporates the legend of national angelic patrons into the Babel drama. God delegates rather than acting alone, assigning each messenger responsibility for a future people and tongue. This interpolation reveals the creativity of interpreters in harmonizing these accounts with wider contemporary traditions. Through elaboration and embellishment, new meanings and resonances emerge from the ancient text. For the Targumists, scripture was fluid and continually reimagined through dialogue with developing cultural contexts.
The Lord said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” (Genesis 15:7)
The Lord said to him: “I am the Lord who brought you out of the furnace of fire of the Chaldaeans to give you this land to inherit it.” (Targum Neofiti, Genesis 15:7)3
The Hebrew text of Genesis 15:7 presents a straightforward statement from God to Abraham: “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans.” Targum Neofiti adds an unusual flair to this verse, specifying that God rescued Abraham from “the furnace of fire” of the Chaldeans. This seeming superfluous description stems from creative exegesis centered on the Hebrew term “ur.”
As James Kugel explains, this word’s dual meaning of both “Ur” (the city) and “fire” or “flame” prompted innovative interpretations. Early readers noted the “coincidence” that Abraham hailed from a place called “fire” and conjectured about its hidden significance.4 Perhaps Ur had literally been a furnace of fiery persecution from which God rescued the patriarch. By interpolating this imagined backstory, the Targum makes explicit the symbolic valences ancient exegetes saw latent in the verse’s ambiguity.
This example reveals some hallmarks of early interpretive practice. First, it represents a common assumption that the language of the text holds layers of meaning waiting to be unpacked. Second, a hyper-attentiveness to etymological and symbolic resonances between words and names. And third, a readiness to fill in narrative gaps through creative conjectures and “reasoned suppositions,” even to the point of anachronism.
For Targum Neofiti, the sparse account of Abraham’s calling in Genesis required elaboration to align with emerging interpretations of his background. By specifying the “furnace of fire,” later reflections on Abraham’s story could be harmonized with the ancient text through imaginative (re) negotiation. This demonstrates the organic, multivalent nature of scripture as a means of continuous, creative reimagination.
Abraham called the name of that place “The Lord provides.” It is said to this day, “In the mountain of the Lord provision will be made.” (Genesis 22:14)
Abraham gave thanks and prayed there, in that place, and said, I pray through the mercies that are before You, O Lord, before whom it is manifest that it was not in the depth of my heart to turn away from doing your laws with joy ... (Targum Neofiti, Genesis 22:14)5
The Hebrew text of Genesis 22:14 offers a brief resolution after the climactic binding of Isaac, with Abraham naming the site “The Lord Provides” in gratitude. Yet Targum Neofiti adds a relatively lengthy elaboration to this verse, inserting a more extensive prayer of thanksgiving from Abraham that is nowhere found in the original account.
This interpolated prayer seems intended to harmonize Genesis 22 with later biblical themes. Specifically, it uses the language of a “perfect heart”—undivided devotion to God—which echoes texts like Deuteronomy 6:5. By implying that Abraham loved God wholeheartedly when binding Isaac, the Targum connects this story with the iconic command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart.”6
More broadly, Abraham’s prayer emphasizes his perfect faith and obedience to God’s decree, stating “there was no division in my heart” when told to sacrifice his son. This aligns with how later tradition would come to interpret this infamous story, as a test of absolute submission to divine will. The Targum grafts this meaning onto the sparse Genesis account through creative interpolation.
Once more we see how Targumists freely expanded and embellished the biblical narratives they had received. By weaving allusions to later texts into the subtext of Genesis, they brought earlier stories into alignment with later ideals. Through its embellishments, Targum Neofiti models an innovative exegetical spirit.
When the boys grew up, Esau became a skilled hunter, a man of the open fields, but Jacob was an even-tempered man, living in tents. (Genesis 25:27)
And the youths grew; and Esau was a man of idleness, a man going out into the field; and Jakob was a man of peace, a minister of the schoolhouse. (Targum Onkelos, Genesis 25:27)7
The Hebrew text's description of Jacob as “dwelling in tents” presents an interpretive puzzle. As James Kugel notes, ancient readers were struck by the strange plural “tents”—why would one man need multiple tents? This inspired creative speculation that Jacob must have dwelt in tents beyond his own. Onkelos provides the solution, rendering Jacob as a “minister of the schoolhouse.”8
By interpreting the “other tent” as a school, Onkelos connects Jacob's tents with the tradition that he studied Torah assiduously, even before Sinai. This fits broader post-biblical depictions of the patriarchs observing Torah, as in Jubilees. Though an obvious anachronism, making Jacob a Torah scholar elucidates the hint of the extra tent.
Moreover, Onkelos adds that Jacob was a “man of peace” while Esau was “idle”—a moral judgment absent from Genesis. This aligns the brothers with later exegetical traditions about their differing characters. Onkelos brings interpretive motifs from Jubilees and beyond into the biblical text itself through creative translation. The Targums again freely elaborate on ambiguities and creatively apply intertextual connections. By harmonizing Genesis with wider traditions, Onkelos models an integrated approach to scripture. The strange plural “tents” becomes an opportunity to illuminate Jacob's personality as studious and peaceful.
Onkelos' depiction of Jacob as a Torah scholar also resonates with ideals from rabbinic Judaism. The early sages frequently extolled Torah study as the highest virtue, and imagined the patriarchs as exemplary models in this regard. By framing Jacob as a youthful “minister of the schoolhouse,” Onkelos connects the genetic roots of Israel with this seminal value of rabbinic culture. Jacob becomes the primordial rabbi, embodying the sacred priority of Torah learning. This intersection illustrates how the Targums not only harmonized scripture with Second Temple texts, but also mediated the developing Judaism of the Rabbis. The Aramaic translations provided a means for integrating emerging values back into the biblical foundation.
As demonstrated through these examples, the Aramaic Targums frequently expanded, embellished, and reinterpreted the Hebrew text of Genesis to align it with post-biblical traditions. Whether incorporating imaginative new details about Abraham's background or harmonizing stories with later theological ideals, the Targumists demonstrated remarkable creativity in bringing ancient scriptures into dialogue with an evolving cultural context.
By seamlessly weaving these threads together, the Targumists produced integrated retellings that resonated with the wider concerns of Second Temple Judaism and even on into emerging Christian and Rabbinic traditions. Through subtle additions and amplifications, new meanings and emphases took root out of the text. The power of language was used to build new means of reading and interpreting.
In these intertextual relationships, we see the fluidity of scripture as a living tradition constantly renewed through acts of re-reading. The Targums model an innovative spirit, reminding us that even foundational texts can be re-interpreted when wisdom calls for it. By filling gaps and searching through ambiguities, they unfold new dimensions of meaning from these primary stories.
The Targums fulfill the interpretive mandate of “turning it and turning it again” - perpetually re-examining texts from new vantage points. In this ongoing process of reimagination, revelation stays fresh.
Hannah, Darrell, D. Guardian Angels and Angelic National Patrons in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity (pp. 413-435) De Gruyter, 2007
Kugel, James L. The Bible as it Was (p. 143) Harvard University Press, 1998
McNamara, Martin Targum and Testament Revisited Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible: A Light on the New Testament (p. 189) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010
Kugel, James L. The Bible as it Was (p. 201) Harvard University Press, 1998