Targum Jonathan

Reflection

Targum Jonathan is the companion volume to Targum Onkelos. Where Onkelos carries the Pentateuch into Aramaic, Targum Jonathan carries the Prophets — Joshua through Kings (the Former Prophets) and Isaiah through Malachi (the Latter Prophets). Together they made the bulk of the Hebrew Scriptures audible in the synagogue for a people whose mother tongue was no longer Hebrew.

Tradition attributes the work to Jonathan ben Uzziel, a disciple of Hillel the Elder who lived in the generation before Jesus. The targum reached its standard form in Babylonia by the fifth century AD. It is freer than Onkelos. Where Onkelos translates, Jonathan often interprets — paraphrasing, expanding, sometimes explaining the prophet's meaning in the line.

For the Christian reader, Targum Jonathan is most striking at Isaiah 52:13 through 53:12. The targum identifies the Servant of the Lord explicitly as the Messiah. "Behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper." That identification was not invented by the church; it was already in the Jewish translation tradition that surrounded the New Testament writers. The interpretive moves Jonathan makes to redirect some of the suffering language onto Israel and the nations rather than the Messiah are themselves a witness to how shocking the suffering Servant was — and how the early Jewish reading still had to grapple with the messianic frame of the passage.

For the believer today, Targum Jonathan is a window into the religious world of the first century. When Jesus read Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth, the Aramaic translation his hearers carried in their heads was something close to this. When he announced that the prophets were fulfilled in him, he was claiming the Servant the targum had already named. The Word the prophets foretold is the Word made flesh — and the Christ Jonathan's translation already half-recognized is the Christ who reigns.