Exodus 32:5

Hebrew Bible

4 He accepted the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molten calf. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow will be a feast to the Lord.” 6 So they got up early on the next day and offered up burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.

Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 32:5

Targum

And he took them from their hands, and bound them in a wrapper, and wrought it with a tool, having made a molten calf; and he said, These, Israel, are thy gods, which brought thee forth from the land of Mizraim. For Aharon had seen Hur slain before him, and was afraid; and he builded an altar before him, and Aharon cried with doleful voice, and said, Let there be a feast before the Lord to‑morrow, of the sacrifice of the slain of these adversaries who have denied their Lord, and have changed the glory of the Shekinah of the Lord for this calf. And on the day following, they arose, and sacrificed burnt-offerings; and the people sat around to eat and to drink, and rose up to disport themselves with strange service.

 Notes and References

"... Aaron, according to the Hebrew, saw something. What he saw is not reported; from the suffix of “before” one could assume he saw the golden calf, but the verb (האר) has no direct object. The targumist provides a direct object, an event to be seen, and makes explicit the effect it has on Aaron. Hur and Aaron are the two whom Moses put in charge before he left to go up the mountain (see Exodus 24:14). With Hur slain, Aaron might be excused doing the will of the people in announcing an idolatrous feast. But the utterance itself is also changed. In its targumic version it is not the announcement of a celebration of the golden calf, but a feast for the Lord indeed, after the purge of idolaters ..."

Zhakevich, Iosif J. Contradictions and Coherence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (pp. 246-247) Harvard University, 2016

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