Textorah

II Chronicles 16

1
בִּשְׁנַת שְׁלֹשִׁים וָשֵׁשׁ לְמַלְכוּת אָסָא עָלָה בַּעְשָׁא מֶלֶךְ־יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל־יְהוּדָה וַיִּבֶן אֶת־הָרָמָה לְבִלְתִּי תֵּת יוֹצֵא וָבָא לְאָסָא מֶלֶךְ יְהוּדָה
In the six and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa, Baasa king of Israel went up against Judah, and built Ramah, that he might not suffer any to go out or come in to Asa king of Judah.
Καὶ ἐν τῷ ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ ἔτει τῆς βασιλείας Ἀσὰ, ἀνέβη βασιλεὺς Ἰσραὴλ ἐπὶ Ἰούδαν, καὶ ᾠκοδόμησε τὴν Ῥαμὰ τοῦ μὴ δοῦναι ἔξοδον καὶ εἴσοδον τῷ Ἀσὰ βασιλεῖ Ἰούδα.
And in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Asa, the king of Israel went up against Judah, and built Ramah, so as not to allow egress or ingress to Asa king of Judah.
2
וַיֹּצֵא אָסָא כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב מֵאֹצְרוֹת בֵּית יְהוָה וּבֵית הַמֶּלֶךְ וַיִּשְׁלַח אֶל־בֶּן־הֲדַד מֶלֶךְ אֲרָם הַיּוֹשֵׁב בְּדַרְמֶשֶׂק לֵאמֹר
Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures of the house of HaShem and of the king's house, and sent to Ben-hadad king of Aram, that dwelt at Damascus, saying:
Καὶ ἔλαβεν Ἀσὰ ἀργύριον καὶ χρυσίον ἐκ θησαυρῶν οἴκου Κυρίου καὶ οἴκου τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ ἀπέστειλε πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Ἄδερ βασιλέως Συρίας τὸν κατοικοῦντα ἐν Δαμασκῷ, λέγων,
And Asa took silver and gold out of the treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king’s house, and sent [them] to the son of Hadad king of Syria, which dwelt in Damascus, saying,
3
בְּרִית בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ וּבֵין אָבִי וּבֵין אָבִיךָ הִנֵּה שָׁלַחְתִּי לְךָ כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב לֵךְ הָפֵר בְּרִיתְךָ אֶת־בַּעְשָׁא מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיַעֲלֶה מֵעָלָי
'There is a league between me and thee, as there was between my father and thy father; behold, I have sent thee silver and gold; go, break thy league with Baasa king of Israel, that he may depart from me.'
διάθου διαθήκην ἀναμέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ, καὶ ἀναμέσον τοῦ πατρός μου καὶ ἀναμέσον τοῦ πατρός σου· ἰδοὺ ἀπέσταλκά σοι χρυσίον καὶ ἀργύριον· δεῦρο καὶ διασκέδασον ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ τὸν Βαασὰ βασιλέα Ἰσραὴλ, καὶ ἀπελθέτω ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ.
Make a covenant between me and thee, and between my father and thy father: behold, I have sent thee gold and silver: come, and turn away from me Baasha king of Israel, and let him depart from me.
4
וַיִּשְׁמַע בֶּן הֲדַד אֶל־הַמֶּלֶךְ אָסָא וַיִּשְׁלַח אֶת־שָׂרֵי הַחֲיָלִים אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ אֶל־עָרֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיַּכּוּ אֶת־עִיּוֹן וְאֶת־דָּן וְאֵת אָבֵל מָיִם וְאֵת כָּל־מִסְכְּנוֹת עָרֵי נַפְתָּלִי
And Ben-hadad hearkened unto king Asa, and sent the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel; and they smote Ijon, and Dan, and Abelmaim, and all the store-cities of Naphtali.
Καὶ ἤκουσεν υἱὸς Ἄδερ τοῦ βασιλέως Ἀσὰ, καὶ ἀπέστειλε τοὺς ἄρχοντας τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις Ἰσραὴλ, καὶ ἐπάταξε τὴν Ἀϊὼν, καὶ τὴν Δὰν, καὶ τὴν Ἀβελμαῒν, καὶ πάσας τὰς περιχώρους Νεφθαλί.
And the son of Hadad hearkened to King Asa, and sent the captains of his host against the cities of Israel; and smote Ijon, and Dan, and Abel-maim, and all the country round Naphtali.
5
וַיְהִי כִּשְׁמֹעַ בַּעְשָׁא וַיֶּחְדַּל מִבְּנוֹת אֶת־הָרָמָה וַיַּשְׁבֵּת אֶת־מְלַאכְתּוֹ
And it came to pass, when Baasa heard thereof, that he left off building Ramah, and let his work cease.
Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ ἀκοῦσαι Βαασὰ, ἀπέλιπε τοῦ μηκέτι οἰκοδομεῖν τὴν Ῥαμὰ, καὶ κατέπαυσε τὸ ἔργον αὐτοῦ.
And it came to pass when Baasha heard [it], he left off building Ramah, and put a stop to his work:
6
וְאָסָא הַמֶּלֶךְ לָקַח אֶת־כָּל־יְהוּדָה וַיִּשְׂאוּ אֶת־אַבְנֵי הָרָמָה וְאֶת־עֵצֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר בָּנָה בַּעְשָׁא וַיִּבֶן בָּהֶם אֶת־גֶּבַע וְאֶת־הַמִּצְפָּה
Then Asa the king took all Judah; and they carried away the stones of Ramah, and the timber thereof, wherewith Baasa had builded; and he built therewith Geba and Mizpah.
Καὶ Ἀσὰ βασιλεὺς ἔλαβε πάντα τὸν Ἰούδαν, καὶ ἔλαβε τοὺς λίθους τῆς Ῥαμὰ καὶ τὰ ξύλα αὐτῆς, ἃ ᾠκοδόμησε Βαασὰ, καὶ ᾠκοδόμησεν ἐν αὐτοῖς τὴν Γαβαὲ καὶ τὴν Μασφά.
then King Asa took all Judah, and took the stones of Ramah, and its timber, [with] which Baasha [had] built; and he built with them Geba and Mizpah.
7
וּבָעֵת הַהִיא בָּא חֲנָנִי הָרֹאֶה אֶל־אָסָא מֶלֶךְ יְהוּדָה וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו בְּהִשָּׁעֶנְךָ עַל־מֶלֶךְ אֲרָם וְלֹא נִשְׁעַנְתָּ עַל־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עַל־כֵּן נִמְלַט חֵיל מֶלֶךְ־אֲרָם מִיָּדֶךָ
And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said unto him: 'Because thou hast relied on the king of Aram, and hast not relied on HaShem thy G-d, therefore is the host of the king of Aram escaped out of thy hand.
Καὶ ἐν τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ ἦλθεν Ἀνανὶ ὁ προφήτης πρὸς Ἀσὰ βασιλέα Ἰούδα, καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, ἐν τῷ πεποιθέναι σε ἐπὶ βασιλέα Συρίας, καὶ μὴ πεποιθέναι σε ἐπὶ Κύριον Θεόν σου, διὰ τοῦτο ἐσώθη ἡ δύναμις Συρίας ἀπὸ τῆς χειρός σου.
And at that time came Hanani the prophet to Asa king of Judah, and said to him, Because thou didst trust on the king of Syria, and didst not trust on the Lord thy God, therefore the army of Syria is escaped out of thy hand.
8
הֲלֹא הַכּוּשִׁים וְהַלּוּבִים הָיוּ לְחַיִל לָרֹב לְרֶכֶב וּלְפָרָשִׁים לְהַרְבֵּה מְאֹד וּבְהִשָּׁעֶנְךָ עַל־יְהוָה נְתָנָם בְּיָדֶךָ
Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim a huge host, with chariots and horsemen exceeding many? yet, because thou didst rely on HaShem, He delivered them into thy hand.
Οὐχ οἱ Αἰθίοπες καὶ Λίβυες ἦσαν εἰς δύναμιν πολλὴν, εἰς θάρσος, εἰς ἱππεῖς, εἰς πλῆθος σφόδρα; καὶ ἐν τῷ πεποιθέναι σε ἐπὶ Κύριον παρέδωκεν εἰς τὰς χεῖράς σου;
Were not the Ethiopians and Libyans a great force, in courage, in horsemen, in great numbers? and did not He deliver them into thy hands, because thou trustedst in the Lord?
9
כִּי יְהוָה עֵינָיו מְשֹׁטְטוֹת בְּכָל־הָאָרֶץ לְהִתְחַזֵּק עִם־לְבָבָם שָׁלֵם אֵלָיו נִסְכַּלְתָּ עַל־זֹאת כִּי מֵעַתָּה יֵשׁ עִמְּךָ מִלְחָמוֹת
For the eyes of HaShem run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is whole toward Him. Herein thou hast done foolishly; for from henceforth thou shalt have wars.'
Ὅτι οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ Κυρίου ἐπιβλέπουσιν ἐν πάσῃ τῇ γῇ, κατισχύσαι ἐν πάσῃ καρδίᾳ πλήρει πρὸς αὐτόν· ἠγνόηκας ἐπὶ τούτῳ, ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἔσται μετὰ σοῦ πόλεμος.
For the eyes of the Lord look upon all the earth, to strengthen every heart that is perfect toward him. In this thou hast done foolishly; henceforth there shall be war with thee.
10
וַיִּכְעַס אָסָא אֶל־הָרֹאֶה וַיִּתְּנֵהוּ בֵּית הַמַּהְפֶּכֶת כִּי־בְזַעַף עִמּוֹ עַל־זֹאת וַיְרַצֵּץ אָסָא מִן־הָעָם בָּעֵת הַהִיא
Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in the prison-house; for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. And Asa oppressed some of the people the same time.
Καὶ ἐθυμώθη Ἀσὰ τῷ προφήτῃ, καὶ παρέθετο αὐτὸν εἰς φυλακὴν, ὅτι ὠργίσθη ἐπὶ τούτῳ, καὶ ἐλυμῄνατο Ἀσὰ ἐν τῷ λαῷ ἐν τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ.
And Asa was angry with the prophet, and put him in prison, for he was angry at this: and Asa vexed some of the people at that time.
11
וְהִנֵּה דִּבְרֵי אָסָא הָרִאשׁוֹנִים וְהָאַחֲרוֹנִים הִנָּם כְּתוּבִים עַל־סֵפֶר הַמְּלָכִים לִיהוּדָה וְיִשְׂרָאֵל
And, behold, the acts of Asa, first and last, lo, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
Καὶ ἰδοὺ οἱ λόγοι Ἀσὰ, οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ οἱ ἔσχατοι, γεγραμμένοι ἐν βιβλίῳ βασιλέων Ἰούδα καὶ Ἰσραήλ.
And, behold, the acts of Asa, the first and the last, [are] written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
12
וַיֶּחֱלֶא אָסָא בִּשְׁנַת שְׁלוֹשִׁים וָתֵשַׁע לְמַלְכוּתוֹ בְּרַגְלָיו עַד־לְמַעְלָה חָלְיוֹ וְגַם־בְּחָלְיוֹ לֹא־דָרַשׁ אֶת־יְהוָה כִּי בָּרֹפְאִים
And in the thirty and ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet; his disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to HaShem, but to the physicians.
Καὶ ἐμαλακίσθη Ἀσὰ ἐν τῷ ἔτει τῷ ἐννάτῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ τοὺς πόδας, ἕως σφόδρα ἐμαλακίσθη· καὶ ἐν τῇ μαλακίᾳ αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἐζήτησε τὸν Κύριον, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἰατρούς.
And Asa was diseased [in] his feet in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, until he was very ill: but in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.
13
וַיִּשְׁכַּב אָסָא עִם־אֲבֹתָיו וַיָּמָת בִּשְׁנַת אַרְבָּעִים וְאַחַת לְמָלְכוֹ
And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.
Καὶ ἐκοιμήθη Ἀσὰ μετὰ τῶν πατέρων αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐτελεύτησεν ἐν τῷ τεσσαρακοστῷ ἔτει τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ.
And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the fortieth year of his reign.
14
וַיִּקְבְּרֻהוּ בְקִבְרֹתָיו אֲשֶׁר כָּרָה־לוֹ בְּעִיר דָּוִיד וַיַּשְׁכִּיבֻהוּ בַּמִּשְׁכָּב אֲשֶׁר מִלֵּא בְּשָׂמִים וּזְנִים מְרֻקָּחִים בְּמִרְקַחַת מַעֲשֶׂה וַיִּשְׂרְפוּ־לוֹ שְׂרֵפָה גְּדוֹלָה עַד־לִמְאֹד
And they buried him in his own sepulchres, which he had hewn out for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices prepared by the perfumers' art; and they made a very great burning for him.
Καὶ ἔθαψαν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ μνήματι, ᾧ ὤρυξεν ἑαυτῷ ἐν πόλει Δαυὶδ, καὶ ἐκοίμισαν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης, καὶ ἔπλησαν ἀρωμάτων καὶ γένη μύρων μυρεψῶν, καὶ ἐποίησαν αὐτῷ ἐκφορὰν μεγάλην ἕως σφόδρα.
And they buried him in the sepulcher which he had dug for himself in the city of David, and they laid him on a bed, and filled [it] with spices and [all] kinds of perfumes of the apothecaries; and they made for him a very great funeral.

How it works

A parallel reader for the Hebrew Bible and its oldest witnesses: the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, each with an English translation where one is available.

Reading a chapter

Choose a book and chapter at the top, or type a reference into Go to (Isa 53:11, 1 Sam 3, sam 3:4, ii kgs 2, ben sira 51). Book names can be abbreviated; a name shared by numbered books (sam, kings, chr, macc) opens the first of them unless you add the number. The arrow keys move between chapters, and the address bar keeps a link to the verse you clicked, so you can bookmark or share a place.

Each row is one verse. Rows follow the Masoretic verse numbering, so the Hebrew, JPS and Samaritan columns line up exactly. The Septuagint is numbered differently in many places (Psalms, Jeremiah, Exodus 35–40, parts of Kings, Proverbs, Daniel, and dozens of chapter boundaries). Its verses are placed against their Masoretic counterparts, and a small tag such as 50:3 shows the Septuagint's own number when it differs. Greek verses that have no Masoretic counterpart (for example the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3) appear in reading order as separate rows marked LXX.

Columns

The chips at the top switch columns on and off. Drag a chip (or a column heading) to reorder; with a chip focused, the ← → keys move it. Your choice is remembered. The Samaritan columns appear only in Genesis–Deuteronomy; the scrolls column appears wherever a manuscript survives, including Ben Sira. Columns marked † are licensed for non-commercial use only.

Words: lexicon and concordance

Hover over any Hebrew word (Masoretic, Samaritan or scroll) or any Greek word to see its dictionary form, Strong's number, a short gloss and its grammar. Click the word to open the concordance on the right: the full lexicon entry, then every occurrence, grouped by book — for Hebrew, separately for the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the scrolls (with the manuscript named). Click a reference to go there; every form of the word in the chapter is highlighted. You can also type a word or a Strong's number into Lexicon at the top.

In the Masoretic text, a Ketiv (the written form, unpointed) is shown in grey immediately before its Qere (the form read aloud); both carry the Qere's dictionary entry.

Variants

The Samaritan Pentateuch and every scroll are compared word by word with the Masoretic text of the same verse:

In the scrolls, letters in brackets are a modern editor's reconstruction and are never counted as variants; letters with a dotted overline are uncertain; ◦ is a trace of an unreadable letter. Manuscripts written in paleo-Hebrew script, and divine names that square-script scrolls write in paleo-Hebrew, are shown in paleo-Hebrew letters (switchable under Display). Hover a manuscript to see its edition. Display → Dead Sea Scrolls can hide the manuscripts that agree with the Masoretic text, or strip the reconstructions to show only what survives.

The comparison is automatic. It aligns words by spelling, so a transposition or a long rewritten passage can be marked imperfectly, and the spelling rule cannot tell a suffix from a vowel letter. Treat the colours as a finding aid and check a critical edition before building an argument on a reading.

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

Besides the Septuagint-only books, the book list has 1 Enoch and Jubilees (“Other ancient books”), shown in R. H. Charles's English with the Qumran copies beside them, and Psalms has a chapter 151. Their scroll copies — like those of Tobit and Ben Sira — have no verse numbers in the data: each fragment is placed by its published identification, and its lines are spread over those verses, so treat the exact verse boundaries as approximate. Aramaic copies (Tobit 4Q196–199 and all of Enoch) are marked “Aramaic” and have no word lookups.

Rabbinic citations

The small ❝ under a verse number opens the passages of rabbinic literature that cite that verse — Mishnah, Tosefta, both Talmuds, Midrash, Targum and Kabbalah (and, if you tick the box, later halakhah, liturgy and thought) — fetched live from Sefaria, so it needs an internet connection. Each passage is listed with Sefaria's date for the work it comes from and a link to read it there. Sefaria's links include allusions and discussions as well as quotations; those it classes as quotations are marked. It works for the Hebrew Bible, Ben Sira (by Kahana's numbering, e.g. the Talmud's quotations of Ben Sira), Tobit and Jubilees. For 1 Enoch, which the rabbis do not quote, it lists instead the Zohar's passages about a “Book of Enoch”.

How the Septuagint is aligned

Each Greek verse is placed by combining three things: the standard table of Septuagint–Masoretic verse correspondences (SIL's lxx.vrs), the table of Masoretic–English numbering differences, and a comparison of the English of Brenton's Septuagint with the JPS English, which confirms each pairing and catches displaced verses. Where no Masoretic verse is similar enough, the Greek verse stands on its own row.

The Greek word data

No openly licensed word-by-word analysis of Brenton's Greek exists, so each Greek word is matched to the most frequent analysis of the same form in the openly licensed Swete Septuagint (Morpheus parser), then to a lexicon entry. About 95% of words are identified. Parses of ambiguous forms (e.g. αὐτοῦ, τοῦ) can be wrong; the card says "automatic parse" as a reminder.

About the texts

What each column is, where it comes from, and what to keep in mind when reading it.

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

The Masoretic text is the Hebrew Bible as transmitted by the Masoretes, scribal scholars active in Tiberias and elsewhere roughly from the 7th to the 10th century, who fixed its vowel points, accents and marginal notes (the Masorah) around a consonantal text that was already essentially stable by the 1st–2nd century CE. The Leningrad Codex (St Petersburg, Firkovich I B 19 A), copied in 1008/1009 CE in the Ben Asher tradition, is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible; the slightly older Aleppo Codex lost most of the Torah in 1947. It is the base of the standard critical editions (BHK, BHS, BHQ).

The Westminster Leningrad Codex is the public-domain digital transcription of it maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center at Westminster Theological Seminary. In this edition a Ketiv appears as its own unpointed word before the pointed Qere.

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

The first English Bible translation produced by a committee of Jewish scholars for the Jewish Publication Society of America, under Max L. Margolis as editor-in-chief, published in 1917. Its language deliberately follows the cadence of the King James and Revised Versions, but its renderings follow the Masoretic text and Jewish exegetical tradition, and it keeps the Hebrew chapter and verse numbering. It is in the public domain; its successor, the New JPS (Tanakh, 1985), is not. The electronic edition used here writes the divine names as “HaShem” and “G-d”.

Septuagint — Brenton's Greek text and the Updated Brenton English

The Septuagint is the Jewish translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The Torah was translated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE (the Letter of Aristeas tells the legend of 72 translators under Ptolemy II); the other books followed over the next two centuries. Because it was made from Hebrew manuscripts older than the Masoretic text, it often preserves a different Hebrew text: Jeremiah is about one-seventh shorter and differently ordered (a shorter Hebrew text of this type survives at Qumran in 4QJerb,d), Job is about one-sixth shorter, and Esther and Daniel have long additions. It was the Bible of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament writers, and became the Old Testament of the Greek church, which in turn led Jewish translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) to produce closer revisions.

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton published an English translation in 1844 and a Greek–English edition in 1851. His Greek is essentially the Sixtine (Roman) edition of 1587, which follows the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus. It is older and less critical than the modern editions of Rahlfs (1935) and Göttingen, which are under copyright. The English column is the Updated Brenton (Adam Boyd, 2020), Brenton's translation with modernised spelling and wording, dedicated to the public domain.

Samaritan Pentateuch †

The Torah as preserved by the Samaritan community of Mount Gerizim (Nablus), written in the Samaritan script, a descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. It differs from the Masoretic text in about 6,000 places, most of them spelling or grammar; in about 1,900 of them it agrees with the Septuagint. Some readings are distinctively Samaritan, above all the commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim added after the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21) and “Gerizim” for “Ebal” in Deut 27:4. Many others — harmonising expansions that copy one passage into its parallel — are shared with “pre-Samaritan” Qumran manuscripts such as 4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb, showing that the text type is older than the Samaritan schism.

European scholars learned of it in 1616, when Pietro della Valle brought a manuscript from Damascus; it was printed in the Paris (1645) and London (1657) Polyglots, collated by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–80) and edited critically by August von Gall (1914–18). The Hebrew here is Aleksandr Sigalov's digital text, based on Kennicott and checked against von Gall; the English is Sigalov's adaptation of the King James Version to the Samaritan readings. For modern scholarship see Abraham Tal's edition of MS Shechem 6 and Stefan Schorch's critical editio maior.

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

Between 1947 and 1956 the remains of about 950 manuscripts were found in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran. Some 230 are biblical — every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther is represented, from tiny fragments to the complete Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) — dating from about 250 BCE to 68 CE. They are a thousand years older than the Leningrad Codex. Most are close to the ancestor of the Masoretic text (“proto-Masoretic”), but others agree with the Septuagint (4QJerb, 4QSama in places), with the Samaritan text type, or with neither — evidence that several forms of the text circulated side by side before the Masoretic text prevailed.

Manuscripts from other sites fill out the picture: Masada (before its fall in 73/74 CE; excavated by Yigael Yadin, 1963–65) and the Bar Kokhba refuges of Wadi Murabba'at and Naḥal Ḥever (132–135 CE), whose biblical texts are already virtually identical with the Masoretic text, as well as Naḥal Ṣe'elim, Wadi Sdeir and Naḥal Arugot. The official publication is the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (Oxford, 1955–2010).

The transcriptions here are those of Martin G. Abegg Jr., James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook, as converted by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC). Each manuscript is labelled with its siglum (e.g. 4QIsad), its DJD number, its find-site and the column or fragment and line. Besides the biblical manuscripts, the copies of Ben Sira, Tobit, 1 Enoch, Jubilees and Psalm 151 are shown under those books. Not every manuscript is in the dataset — notably the Greek scrolls (such as the Greek Minor Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever) are absent, and the Masada Ben Sira scroll is added separately (see Ben Sira).

Ben Sira

The Wisdom of Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, composed in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 190–180 BCE and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt after 132 BCE (his prologue explains the difficulty of rendering Hebrew into Greek). It belongs to the Septuagint and to the Catholic and Orthodox canons (Latin Ecclesiasticus) but not to the Jewish one, although the Talmud and midrash quote it. Its Hebrew text was lost to the West until 1896, when Solomon Schechter, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson identified medieval copies in the Cairo Genizah; ancient Hebrew copies then emerged at Qumran and Masada.

About two-thirds of the Hebrew is now known, from six medieval Genizah manuscripts (A–F, 10th–12th century) and three ancient ones: 2QSir (2Q18; Sir 6:14–15, 20–32), the acrostic of Sir 51:13–20, 30 in the Psalms Scroll 11QPsa (columns 21–22), and the Masada scroll (Mas1h), found by Yigael Yadin in 1964 in a casemate room of the fortress and published in 1965: seven columns with Sir 39:27–44:17, copied in the early 1st century BCE, little more than a century after the author. Its agreement with Genizah manuscript B showed that the medieval copies descend from the ancient Hebrew rather than from a translation back from Greek or Syriac.

Here the book is shown in Brenton's Greek and English. The Hebrew column is the Kahana edition, as transcribed on Hebrew Wikisource and distributed by Sefaria (CC BY-SA): a running text built on the Genizah manuscripts, in which words in [brackets] are Kahana's restorations; chapters with no surviving Hebrew are empty. Kahana numbers the verses in the Hebrew order — in the Greek, two blocks of chapters 30–36 are transposed — so his verses have been matched to Brenton's by content for this site, with his own number shown as “Heb.” where it differs. The scrolls column has the three ancient witnesses; the Masada text is Eric Reymond's transcription from bensira.org. Their placement was made for this site by matching the text; there is no Masoretic text to compare them with, so no variants are marked.

Psalm 151

The Septuagint Psalter ends with a short psalm “outside the number”, in which David recalls tending his father's sheep, his anointing and his victory over Goliath. It belongs to the Greek, Syriac and Ethiopic Bibles but not to the Hebrew one, and was long thought to have been composed in Greek — until the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa, published by James Sanders in 1965) turned out to contain a longer Hebrew original in its 28th column, as two poems (151A on David's music and anointing, 151B, broken off, on Goliath). The Greek is a condensed translation of them. The psalm is shown as chapter 151 of Psalms, with the scroll's lines under the Greek verses they correspond to.

Tobit

A Jewish novella of the Eastern diaspora (probably 3rd–2nd century BCE): the pious exile Tobit, blinded in Nineveh, sends his son Tobias to recover money in Media, guided by the angel Raphael in disguise; on the way Tobias marries Sarah and drives off the demon Asmodeus. It is in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Orthodox canons. It survives in two Greek forms — a shorter one (Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, printed by Brenton) and a longer one (Codex Sinaiticus) — and the Qumran copies, four in Aramaic (4Q196–199) and one in Hebrew (4Q200), published by Joseph Fitzmyer in 1995, side with the longer form, which is now generally taken as nearer the original. Their verse placement here follows Fitzmyer's identifications.

1 Enoch

A collection of five works ascribed to Enoch, the seventh from Adam who “walked with God” (Gen 5:24): the Book of the Watchers (ch. 1–36, 3rd century BCE), on the angels who descended to the daughters of men; the Parables (37–71); the Astronomical Book (72–82); the Dream Visions (83–90), with the “Animal Apocalypse” of Israel's history; and the Epistle of Enoch (91–108). It is quoted in the Letter of Jude (1:14–15) and is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; Greek survives for about a third. Józef Milik published the Aramaic fragments from Qumran Cave 4 in 1976: eleven copies, covering every part except the Parables, the oldest from around 200 BCE. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation from the Ethiopic (public domain). The Astronomical scrolls (4Q208–211) contain a much longer calendar than the Ethiopic; only their few passages that match chapters 76–82 are placed.

Jubilees

A retelling of Genesis and Exodus 1–14 as revealed to Moses on Sinai by an “angel of the presence”, dated by a calendar of 49-year jubilees and a 364-day solar year (mid-2nd century BCE). Like 1 Enoch it is canonical only in the Ethiopian church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; parts survive in Latin, Syriac and Greek quotations. Fragments of about fifteen Hebrew copies were found at Qumran, more than of most biblical books, and are published in DJD 13 (VanderKam and Milik, 1994) and DJD 23. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation (public domain).

Lexicon and concordance data

Hebrew words carry the analysis of STEPBible's Translators Amalgamated Hebrew OT (Tyndale House, Cambridge): extended Strong's numbers — James Strong's 1890 numbering, subdivided to follow the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon (1906) — with morphology from the ETCBC and an abridged BDB for definitions. Samaritan and scroll words take the analysis of the Masoretic word they correspond to, or, where they differ, of the same written form elsewhere in the Masoretic text. Greek words are matched through the Swete Septuagint and the Morpheus parser to STEPBible's Greek lexicon, which draws on Abbott-Smith (1922) and Liddell–Scott–Jones.

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