The Aramaic Bible · the Torah
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Numbers · chapter 36
Aramaic public domain · English by Etheridge (1862)What is the Aramaic Bible?
After the exile, most Jews spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, so in the synagogue each Scripture reading was followed by an Aramaic translation read aloud, so ordinary people could follow. Those translations are the Aramaic Bible. Scholars call them the Targums.
Why it’s worth reading: a Targum doesn’t just translate, it quietly explains as it goes. So it’s a window into how the first Jewish readers actually understood a passage. Famously, the Aramaic of Isaiah 53 names the servant “the Messiah” outright.
Why it reads differently from your Bible: a Targum doesn’t just translate, it interprets as it goes, so its wording often expands or differs from the plain Hebrew. That difference is the window into how the first readers understood it.
Tap any Aramaic word to trace it to its Jastrow dictionary entry.
And the heads of the fathers of the family of the Beni Gilead bar Makir bar Menasheh, even the family of the Beni Gilead bar Joseph, came to the house of judgment, and spake before Mosheh and the princes, the chief fathers of the Beni Israel,
and said: The Lord commanded Rabboni {our lord} to give the land an inheritance by lot to the children of Israel, and Rabboni was commanded before the Lord to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.
But if these marry into any of the tribes of the children of Israel, their inheritance will be withdrawn from that of our fathers, and will be added to the inheritance of the tribe which will have become theirs, and our lot will be diminished.
And at the Jubilee of the Beni Israel their inheritance will be added to that of their tribe in which they will be; and their possession will have been withdrawn from the inheritance of our father's tribe.
Then Mosheh commanded the children of Israel by the Word of the Lord, saying: The tribe of the Beni Joseph have said well.
This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded,-not for the generations that shall arise after the division of the land, but for the daughters of Zelophehad, saying: They may be the wives of them who are proper in their eyes, only such must be of the families of their father's tribe.
That the inheritance of the children of Israel may not pass about from one tribe to another: for the children of Israel shall every one keep to the inheritance of their father's tribe.
As the Lord commanded Mosheh, so did the daughters of Zelophehad;
and Mahalah, Thirzah, Hogelab, Milchah and Nohah, the daughters of Zelophehad, became wives of sons of their kindred;
of the family of the children of Menasheh bar Joseph were they wives, and their inheritance was with the tribe of their father's family.
These are the commandments and orders of judgments which the Lord commanded the children of Israel, by Mosheh, in the plains of Moab by the Jordan near Jericho.
Aramaic. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Aramaic: 'Targum Jonathan on Numbers' (public domain), served by the Sefaria v3 API (sefaria.org)
English. English: J. W. Etheridge (1862) (Public Domain) — an established translation of the Targum itself, joined by verse number. Never an AI rendering (BB-42).
We show the license-cleared original Aramaic and an established English translation, each Aramaic word traceable to a public-domain lexicon. We never machine-translate a primary text.