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Pseudo Jonathan Genesis

About this book
Chapter 6

1 When the children of men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and beautiful daughters were born to them.⁠ 2 The sons of the great ones saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, that they painted their eyes and put on rouge, and walked about with naked flesh. They conceived lustful thoughts,⁠ and they took wives to themselves from among all who pleased them.⁠ 3 The Lord said in his Memra, 'None of the evil generations that are to arise (in the future) will be judged according to the order of judgment applied to the generation of the Flood, (that is) to be destroyed and wiped out from the world. Did I not put my holy spirit in them that they might perform good deeds? But behold, their deeds are evil. Behold, I gave them an extension of a hundred and twenty years that they might repent, but they have not done so.' 4 Shamhazai and Azael fell from heaven⁠ and were on earth in those days, and also after the sons of the great ones had gone in to the daughters of men, who bore them children; these are called the heroes of old, the men of renown.⁠ 5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man increased on earth, and that every impulse of his heart's designs was nothing but evil every day. 6 And the Lord regretted in his Memra that he had made man on earth, and he debated in his Memra about them. 7 Then the Lord said, 'I will wipe out from the face of the earth the men whom I created, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I regret in my Memra that I made them.' 8 But Noah, because he was a righteous man, found favor before the Lord. 9 This is the genealogy of the family of Noah. Noah was an innocent man, he was perfect in good works, in his age. Noah walked in the fear of the Lord. 10 Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 The earth became corrupt because of its inhabitants, who strayed from the ways that are right before the Lord, and the earth was filled with acts of robbery. 12 The Lord saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, because all flesh, without exception, had corrupted its ways upon the earth. 13 So the Lord said to Noah, 'The end of all flesh has come, for the earth is full of acts of robbery because of their evil deeds. Behold, I shall destroy them with the earth.' 14 Make yourself an ark of cedar wood; you shall make a hundred and fifty compartments for the ark on the left, and thirty-six in its breadth, and ten cabins in the middle in which food may be stored, and five reservoirs on the right and five on the left. And you shall plaster it inside and out with bitumen. 15 ... 16 Go to Pishon, and from there take a gem, and put it in the ark to give you light. You shall complete it to a cubit from the top. Put the door of the ark in its side. With lower, second, and third compartments shall you make it. 17 For my part, behold, I will bring floodwaters upon the earth to destroy all flesh under the heavens in which there is the breath of life; everything on earth shall perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. 19 Of all that lives, of all flesh, you shall take two of each into the ark to keep alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 From birds according to their kinds, from the animals according to their kinds, from every creeping thing of the earth according to its kind, two of each shall come to you, brought by an angel that will catch them and bring them to you to keep them alive. 21 For your part, take of every food that is eaten, so that it may serve as food for you and for them. 22 Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him.

Texts in conversation

Compare Jubilees 7:20 and Pseudo Jonathan Genesis 6:2

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions · Targum

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Summary

The Aramaic translation of Genesis in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan follows a tradition found in the book of Jubilees that emphasizes public modesty, responding to the common behavior of Greco-Roman culture that practiced public nudity.

Passages

Jubilees 7:20

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
20 And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372] Noah began to teach his grandsons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he urged his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honor father and mother, and love their neighbor, and protect themselves from sexual immorality and impurity and all iniquity. 21 For because of these three things the flood came upon the earth, namely, because of the sexual immorality in which the Watchers against the commandments prescribed for them pursued sexual relations with human women, and married whichever women they chose: and they began the practice of impurity. 22 And they fathered sons, the Nephilim, and they were all unlike, and they devoured one another: and the Giants killed the Naphil, and the Naphil killed the Eljo, and the Eljo humanity, and one man another.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

Pseudo Jonathan Genesis 6:2

Targum
1 When the children of men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and beautiful daughters were born to them. 2 The sons of the great ones saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, that they painted their eyes and put on rouge, and walked about with naked flesh. They conceived lustful thoughts, and they took wives to themselves from among all who pleased them. 3 The Lord said in his Memra, 'None of the evil generations that are to arise (in the future) will be judged according to the order of judgment applied to the generation of the Flood, (that is) to be destroyed and wiped out from the world. Did I not put my holy spirit in them that they might perform good deeds? But behold, their deeds are evil. Behold, I gave them an extension of a hundred and twenty years that they might repent, but they have not done so.'
300–1200 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Pseudo Jonathan Genesis

References

"... The concluding reference in passage A to the nudity of the Generation of the Flood, appears to be an adaptation of a much older tradition relating to the Antediluvians' immoral practices. One of the principal offences of the Generation of the Flood, according to R. Meir and R. Judah the Patriarch, was the public display of their nudity, (See particularly Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 6:2 (from its inclusion in a Targum, we may presume that this tradition presumably gained wide currency in Talmudic times) alluding, no doubt, to the practices of the Graeco-Roman world. In the following passage, this tradition, which may have its origins in pre-Christian times, (See Jubilees 7:20, where Noah is depicted as admonishing his children to avoid the practice of uncovering the flesh) is associated appropriately with Job 24:7 ..."
Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 31.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Jubilees 7:20 and Pseudo Jonathan Genesis 6:2

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