An Apparent Contradiction in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 25:20-26: Was Rebekah Barren for Twenty or Twenty-Two Years?

While the Hebrew Bible does not specify the duration of Rebekah's barrenness, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (TgPsJ) Gen. 25:21 introduces a comment that Rebekah was barren for twenty-two years. This appears to produce an inconsistency, both between the Hebrew Bible and TgPsJ, and within the TgPsJ narrative itself. Two references to Isaac's age-in the context of his relationship to Rebekah-seem to suggest that Rebekah was barren for twenty years:At 25:20, Isaac marries Rebekah when he is forty; and at 25:26, Esau and Jacob are born when Isaac is sixty. This twenty-year gap presumably reveals the twenty years of Rebekah's barrenness. Indeed, scholars have suggested that TgPsJ's 'twenty-two years' be emended to 'twenty years'. This article, however, contends that TgPsJ's 'twenty-two years' should be retained, and that the text of TgPsJ proves to be a coherent text when read in the greater context of biblical and Jewish tradition about Isaac and Rebekah.