The Aramaic Bible · the Prophets
Targum Jonathan on the Prophets Jonah · chapter 3
Aramaic public domain · English where it exists, else the Bible (BSB)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.
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And this was the word of prophecy from before the LORD with Jonah again, saying:
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Get up, go down to Nineveh, the great city, and prophecy upon them the prophecy that I command you.
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And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh per the word of the LORD, and Nineveh was a big city before the LORD — a three-days’ walk across.
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And Jonah began to enter the city, a one-day’s walk in, and he announced and said: “At the end of forty days Nineveh will be overturned!”
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And the people of Nineveh believed the word of the LORD, and they decreed a fast and bound with sackcloth, from the greatest to the smallest.
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And the word reached before the king of Nineveh, and he got up from his royal throne and removed his valuable clothes and from him and covered himself in sackcloth and sat on ashes.
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And he called out and said in Nineveh from the decree of the king and his officials, saying: “People and animals, cattle and sheep, none shall taste anything, nor graze, nor drink water.”
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And people and animals were covered in sackcloth and prayed before the LORD vigorously, and each man turned from his wicked way and from the robbery of his hands.
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“Who knows, He has our guilt in His hand! He may turn from us and have mercy on it from before the LORD, and turn back from His strong anger that we may not be lost.”
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And their acts were revealed before God, that they had turned from their evil ways, and God turned the evil that He had said he would do away from them and did not do it.
Aramaic. Targum Jonathan to the Prophets, Aramaic: 'Mikraot Gedolot' (public domain), served by the Sefaria v3 API (sefaria.org)
English. English: Sefaria Community Translation (CC0) — 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.