Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

English

And the LORD called the light Day, and made it that the inhabitants of the world might labour in it; and the darkness he called Night, and made it that in it the creatures might have rest. And it was evening, and it was morning, one day.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Hebrew / Aramaic

Sefaria, 'Targum Jonathan on Genesis' · pd

Notes

Two things at once. The targum keeps the cardinal, yoma chad, as Onkelos does. And it supplies a reason for the pair that no Hebrew word demands: day is for labour, night for rest. Etheridge's 1862 English prints 'the First Day' — a translator taking the side of the ordinal, exactly as the WEB does — so the cardinal is restored here in a fresh draft. Corrected at Phase 6: this was written as though the ordinal were Etheridge's response to the expansive targum. It is not. His Onkelos, fetched from archive.org because Sefaria's Etheridge has no Genesis 1, prints 'Day the First' for the same Aramaic yoma chad, and 'the Second Day' after it — so the ordinal is a habit of the translator applied evenly, not a judgement about this text.

Threads

• → parallel · The Seventy
  Aramaic 'yoma chad' and Greek ἡμέρα μία make the same decision independently: keep the cardinal, though every following day in the chapter is an ordinal. Onkelos does the same.
• → echoes · Targum Onkelos
  Phase 6. Pseudo-Jonathan keeps Onkelos's yoma chad unaltered and then expands the clause it sits in, giving the day to labour and the night to rest — an expansion of the reason and not of the number. Where the targum that adds most adds nothing to a word, the word was not felt to need help.
• ← parallel · Bruno of Segni
  'Divina providentia non ad laborem, sed ad quietem noctem creavit' is the reason Pseudo-Jonathan gives in Aramaic for the same pair — the light made that the world's inhabitants might labour, the darkness that the creatures might rest. Neither could have read the other.