Texts in Conversation
Exodus 4 says Moses brings the “staff of God” back to Egypt, language that implies God owns it. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos avoids this and rewrites the description into a phrase that removes any hint that the staff belongs to God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 4:20
Hebrew Bible
19 The Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, because all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” 20 Then Moses took his wife and sons and put them on a donkey and headed back to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the staff of God in his hand. 21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put under your control. But I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Onkelos Exodus 4:20
Targum
19 And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go back to Egypt; for all the men who sought to kill you are dead. 20 And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them on the donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff with which the miracles had been done before the Lord in his hand. 21 And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, and he will not send the people away.
Date: 50–500 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... 'The rod with which the miracles were done' ... the biblical phrase matei haElohim means 'the rod of God.' Onkelos rejects the notion that God needs or uses a rod, and substitutes, again, the Tetragrammaton for the Hebrew Elohim ..."
Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner, Onkelos on the Torah, Exodus: Understanding the Bible Text (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2006), 20.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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