Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

English

And the Lord beheld the light, that it was good; and the Lord divided between the light and the darkness.

J. W. Etheridge, 1862 · etheridge

Hebrew / Aramaic

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen 1:4 · pd

Notes

The expansive targum, and on this verse it expands nothing: its Gen 1:4 is Onkelos letter for letter. One verse later it is at work again — the light was made so that the inhabitants of the world might labour by it, the darkness so that the creatures might rest in it — which is Remigius' reason for the division, arrived at in Aramaic. That the expansion attaches to the naming in v. 5 and not to the dividing in v. 4 is itself evidence about where the rabbinic bench thought the difficulty lay.

Threads

• → echoes · Targum Onkelos
  Pseudo-Jonathan reproduces Onkelos word for word at Gen 1:4 and expands freely at Gen 1:5 — the light made so that the inhabitants of the world might labour by it, the darkness so that the creatures might rest in it. The expansive targum finds nothing to expand in the dividing, which is the whole of the Latin bench's difficulty.
• ← parallel · Remigius of Auxerre
  The same reason for the division, given in Aramaic and in Latin with no possible contact: Pseudo-Jonathan, that God made the day so that the inhabitants of the world might labour by it and the night so that the creatures might rest in it; Remigius, that God made both the light and the darkness 'that men might work in the light and rest in the night'. Remigius uses it to prove the darkness is a creature; the targum draws no conclusion from it at all.