Textorah

Ben Sira 10

1
שׁוֹפֵט עַם יוֹסֵד עַמּוֹ, וּמֶמְשֶׁלֶת מֵבִין סְדוּרָה.
The people's judge is a foundation to his people, and his dominion will understand its orders [rulings].
Κριτὴς σοφὸς παιδεύσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἡγεμονία συνετοῦ τεταγμένη ἔσται.
A wise judge will instruct his people; And the government of a prudent man is well ordered.
2
מֶלֶךְ פָּרוּעַ יַשְׁחִית עִיר, וְעִיר נוֹשֶׁבֶת בְּשֶׂכֶל שָׂרֶיהָ. כְּשׁוֹפֵט עַם כֵּן מְלִיצָיו, וּכְרֹאשׁ עִיר כֵּן יוֹשְׁבָיו.
An wild king will destroy the city, and a city is settled by the intelligence of its rulers. Like the judge of the people, so are his officers; and like the head of state, so are its inhabitants.
Κατὰ τὸν κριτὴν τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ οὕτως καὶ οἱ λειτουργοὶ αὐτοῦ, καὶ κατὰ τὸν ἡγούμενον τῆς πόλεως πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες αὐτήν.
As the judge of the people is himself, so are his officers; And what manner of man the ruler of the city is, such are all they that dwell therein.
3
Βασιλεὺς ἀπαίδευτος ἀπολεῖ τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ πόλις οἰκισθήσεται ἐν συνέσει δυναστῶν.
An unwise king destroyeth his people; But through the prudence of them which are in authority the city shall be inhabited.
4
בְּיַד אֱלֹהִים מֶמְשֶׁלֶת כָּל גֶּבֶר, וְלִפְנֵי מְחוֹקֵק יָשִׁית הוֹדוֹ.
In the Lord’s hand is a man’s success, and before the engraver [stele] will he set God's praise.
Ἐν χειρὶ Κυρίου ἐξουσία τῆς γῆς, καὶ τὸν χρήσιμον ἐγερεῖ εἰς καιρὸν ἐπʼ αὐτῆς.
The power of the earth is in the hand of the Lord, And in due time he will set over it one that is profitable.
5
בְּיַד אֱלֹהִים מֶמְשֶׁלֶת תֵּבֵל, וְאִישׁ לְעֵת יַעֲמוֹד עָלֶיהָ.
In the Lord’s hand is the governance of the realm, and a timely man will he raise to stand over it.
Ἐν χειρὶ Κυρίου εὐοδία ἀνδρὸς, καὶ προσώπῳ γραμματέως ἐπιθήσει δόξαν αὐτοῦ.
In the hand of God is the prosperity of man: And upon the person of the scribe shall he lay his honor.
6
בְּכֵל פֶּשַע אַל תְּשַׁלֵּם רַע לְרֵע, וְאַל תִּהֲלַךְ בְּדֶרֶךְ גַּאֲוָה
For every sin, do not repay evil to your neighbor, and walk not in the way of haughtiness.
Ἐπὶ παντὶ ἀδικήματι μὴ μηνιάσῃς τῷ πλησίον, καὶ μὴ πράσσε μηδὲν ἐν ἔργοις ὕβρεως.
Bear not hatred to thy neighbor for every wrong; And do nothing at all by injurious practices.
7
שְׂנוּאָה לְאָדוֹן וַאֲנָשִׁים גַּאֲוָה, וּמִשְּׁנֵיהֶם מַעַל עֹשֶׁק.
Hateful before the Lord and humans is pride, and unjustly offending both.
Μισητὴ ἔναντι Κυρίου καὶ ἀνθρώπων ὑπερηφανία, καὶ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων πλημμελήσει ἄδικα.
Pride is hateful before God and man: And by both doth one commit iniquity.
8
מַלְכוּת מִגּוֹי אֶל גּוֹי תִּסֹּב, בִּגְלַל חֲמַס גַּאֲוָה.
Dominion is transferred from nation to nation on account of violence and haughtiness.
Βασιλεία ἀπὸ ἔθνους εἰς ἔθνος μετάγεται, διὰ ἀδικίας καὶ ὕβρεις καὶ χρήματα.
Because of unrighteous dealings, injuries, and riches gotten by deceit, The kingdom is translated from one people to another.
9
מַה יִּגְאֶה עָפָר וָאֵפֶר, אֲשֶׁר בְּחַיָּיו יוּרַם גִּוְיוֹ.
With what does earth and ashes behave arrogantly? because in his life he erected his back [body]?
Τί ὑπερηφανεύεται γῆ καὶ σποδός; ὅτι ἐν ζωῇ ἔῤῥιψα τὰ ἐνδόσθια αὐτοῦ.
Why is earth and ashes proud? There is not a more wicked thing than a covetous man: For such a one setteth his own soul to sale; Because while he liveth he casteth away his bowels.
10
שֶׁמֶץ מַחֲלָה יַצְהִיב רוֹפֵא, מֶלֶךְ הַיּוֹם וּמָחָר יִפּוֹל.
The terror of the ill makes a physician shine; Today a king, and tomorrow he falls. [Alternative (1): A long illness mocks the physician (2): A little illness reveals the skill of the healer (3): A whisper of illness makes a doctor happy.]
Μακρὸν ἀῤῥώστημα σκώπτει ἰατρὸς, καὶ βασιλεὺς σήμερον, καὶ αὔριον τελευτήσει.
The physician cutteth off a long disease: And he that is today a king tomorrow shall die.
11
בְּמוֹת אָדָם יִנְחַל, רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה כִּנִּים וָרֶמֶשׂ.
When a person dies he inherits these: worms, maggots, lice and swarms.
Ἐν γὰρ τῷ ἀποθανεῖν ἄνθρωπον, κληρονομήσει ἑρπετὰ καὶ θηρία καὶ σκώληκας.
For when a man is dead, He shall inherit creeping things, beasts, and worms.
12
תְּחִלַת גְּאוֹן אָדָם מוּעָז, וּמֵעֹשֶׂהוּ יָסוּר לִבּוֹ.
The beginning of pride is to act impudently, and to those that made him he turns away his heart.
Ἀρχὴ ὑπερηφανίας, ἀνθρώπου ἀφισταμένου ἀπὸ Κυρίου, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ποιήσαντος αὐτὸν ἀπέστη ἡ καρδία αὐτοῦ.
The beginning of pride is when one departeth from God, And his heart is turned away from his Maker.
13
כִּי מִקְוֵה זָדוֹן חֵטְא, וּמְקוֹרָהּ יַבִּיעַ זִמָּה.
For the pool of passion is sin, and its spring will pour out filth.
Ὅτι ἀρχὴ ὑπερηφανίας ἁμαρτία, καὶ ὁ κρατῶν αὐτῆς ἐξομβρήσει βδέλυγμα· διὰ τοῦτο παρεδόξασε Κύριος τὰς ἐπαγωγὰς, καὶ κατέστρεψεν εἰς τέλος αὐτούς.
For pride is the beginning of sin, And he that hath it shall pour out abomination: And therefore the Lord brought upon them strange calamities, And overthrew them utterly.
14
עַל כֵּן מִלֵּא לִבּוֹ אֱלֹהִים נָגַע, וַיַּכֵּהוּ עַד כַּלֵּה. כִּסֵּא גֵאִים הָפַך אֱלֹהִים, וַיֹּשֶׁב עֲנָוִים תַּחְתָּם.
Therefore the Lord brought upon him injury (leprosy), and smote him until destroyed. Thrones of the haughty did the Lord overturn, and he seated the humble in their stead.
Θρόνους ἀρχόντων καθεῖλεν ὁ Κύριος, καὶ ἐκάθισε πρᾳεῖς ἀντʼ αὐτῶν.
The Lord hath cast down the thrones of proud princes, And set up the meek in their stead.
15
Ῥίζας ἐθνῶν ἐξέτιλεν ὁ Κύριος, καὶ ἐφύτευσε ταπεινοὺς ἀντʼ αὐτῶν.
The Lord hath plucked up the roots of the proud nations, And planted the lowly in their place.
16
עִקְבוֹת גּוֹיִם טִמְטֵם אֱלֹהִים, וְשָׁרְשָׁם עַד אֶרֶץ קִעֲקָע.
Footprints of the heathens did the Lord bury, and its roots to earths core did he exterminate.
χώρας ἐθνῶν κατέστρεψεν ὁ Κύριος, καὶ ἀπώλεσεν αὐτὰς ἕως θεμελίων γῆς.
The Lord overthrew countries of the heathen, And destroyed them to the foundations of the earth.
17
וְסִחָם מֵאֶרֶץ וַיִּתְּשֵׁם, וַיַּשְׁבֵּת מֵאֶרֶץ זִכְרָם.
And he scraped them from the earth and rooted them out, and erased their memorial from earth. [Ezekiel 26:4. Alternatively: "He rooted out their cartilage from the land" See M. Pesachim 7:11]
Ἐξήρανεν ἐξ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀπώλεσεν αὐτοὺς, καὶ κατέπαυσεν ἀπὸ γῆς τὸ μνημόσυνον αὐτῶν.
He took some of them away, and destroyed them, And hath made their memorial to cease from the earth.
18
לֹא נָאוֶה לֶאֱנוֹשׁ זָדוֹן, וְעַזוּת, אַף - לִילוּד אִשָּׁה.
Pride is not becoming of humans, nor impudence & anger to those born to women.
Οὐκ ἔκτισται ἀνθρώποις ὑπερηφανία, οὐδὲ ὀργὴ θυμοῦ γεννήμασιν γυναικῶν.
Pride was not made for men, Nor furious anger for them that are born of a woman.
19
זֶרַע נִכְבָּד מַה זָּרַע לֶאֱנוֹשׂ, [זֶרַע נִכְבָּד יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים, זֶרַע נִכְבָּד שׂוֹמֵר מִצְוָה. זֶרַע נִקְלֶה מַה זָּרַע לֶאֱנוֹשׁ], זֶרַע נִקְלֶה עוֹבֵר מִצְוָה.
What kind of offspring is honorable? A mans offspring. Offspring who fear the Lord. Honorable offspring keep the commandments. What kind of offspring is dishonorable? A mans offspring. Dishonorable offspring who transgress the commandments.
Σπέρμα ἔντιμον ποίον; σπέρμα ἀνθρώπου· σπέρμα ἔντιμον ποῖον; οἱ φοβούμενοι τὸν Κύριον· σπέρμα ἄτιμον ποῖον; σπέρμα ἀνθρώπου· σπέρμα ἄτιμον ποῖον; οἱ παραβαίνοντες ἐντολάς.
They that fear the Lord are a sure seed, And they that love him an honorable plant: They that regard not the law are a dishonorable seed; They that transgress the commandments are a deceivable seed.
20
בֵּין אַחִים רֹאשָׁם נִכְבָּד, וִירֵא אֱלֹהִים בְּעַמּוֹ.
Amongst brothers [kin] their leader is honorable, and the fear the Lord is in his people.
Ἐν μέσῳ ἀδελφῶν ὁ ἡγούμενος αὐτῶν ἔντιμος, καὶ οἱ φοβούμενοι Κύριον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς αὐτοῦ.
Among brethren he that is chief is honorable; So are they that fear the Lord in his eyes.
22
גֵּר וְזָר נָכְרִי וָרָשׁ, תִּפְאֶרֶת יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים
Immigrant and stranger, foreigner and poor person— their boast is fear of the Lord.
Πλούσιος καὶ ἔνδοξος καὶ πτωχὸς, τὸ καύχημα αὐτῶν φόβος Κυρίου.
Whether he be rich, noble or poor, Their glory is the fear of the Lord.
23
אֵין לִבְזוֹת דַּל מַשְׁכִּיל, וְאֵין לְכַבֵּד עַוָּל אֲשֶׁר הוּרָם.
Do no denigrate an intelligent poor person, and do not glorify a sinful man who has risen.
Οὐ δίκαιον ἀτιμάσαι πτωχὸν συνετὸν, καὶ οὐ καθήκει δοξάσαι ἄνδρα ἁμαρτωλόν.
It is not meet to despise the poor man that hath understanding; Neither is it convenient to magnify a sinful man.
24
נָגִיד מוֹשֶׁל וְשׁוֹפֵט נִכְבָּדוּ, וְאֵין גָּדוֹל מִיְּרֵא אֱלֹהִים.
A noble, ruler, judge shall be glorified, but nothing is greater than fearing the Lord.
Μεγιστὰν καὶ κριτὴς καὶ δυνάστης δοξασθήσεται, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῶν τις μείζων τοῦ φοβουμένου τὸν Κύριον.
Great men, and judges, and potentates, shall be honored; Yet is there none of them greater than he that feareth the Lord.
25
עֶבֶד מַשְׂכּיל הוּרָם, וְעֶבֶד סָכָל לֹא יִתְאוֹנֵן.
An intelligent servant shall rise, and a foolish servant will not complain.
Οἰκέτῃ σοφῷ ἐλεύθεροι λειτουργήσουσι, καὶ ἀνὴρ ἐπιστήμων οὐ γογγύσει.
Unto the servant that is wise shall they that are free do service: And he that hath knowledge will not grudge when he is reformed.
26
אַל תִּתְחַכַּם לַעֲבוֹד חֶפְצֶךָ, וְאַל תִּתְכַּבֵּד בְּמוֹעֵד צָרְכֶּךָ.
Do not be shrewd to perform your desires, and do not extol yourself in your hour of difficulty.
Μὴ σοφίζου ποιῆσαι τὸ ἔργον σου, καὶ μὴ δοξάζου ἐν καιρῷ στενοχωρίας σου.
Be not overwise in doing thy business; And boast not thyself in the time of thy distress.
27
טוֹב עוֹבֵד וְיוֹתֵר הוֹן, מִמִּתְכַּבֵּד וַחֲסַר מַתָּן.
Superior is a person who toils and accumulates treasure, to one who is extolled but lacks allotment.
Κρείσσων ἐργαζόμενος ἐν πᾶσιν, ἢ περιπατῶν, ἢ δοξαζόμενος καὶ ἀπορῶν ἄρτων.
Better is he that laboreth, and aboundeth in all things, Than he that boasteth himself, and wanteth bread.
28
בְּנִי בַּעֲנָוָה כַּבֵּד נַפְשֶׁךָ, וְיִתֶּן לְךָ טַעַם וְכָבוֹד אָבַדְתָּ.
Son, in humility give honor to your soul, and it will give you the taste and respect that you lost.
Τέκνον, ἐν πρᾳΰτητι δόξασον τὴν ψυχήν σου, καὶ δὸς αὐτῇ τιμὴν κατὰ τὴν ἀξίαν αὐτῆς.
My son, glorify thy soul in meekness, And give it honor according to the dignity thereof.
29
מַרְשִׁיעַ נַפְשׁוֹ מִי יַצְדִיקֶנּוּ, וּמִי יְכַבֵּד מַקְלֶה נַפְשׁוֹ.
Him who errs against his own soul—who will vindicate? And who will give repute to him who devalues his own life?
Τὸν ἁμαρτάνοντα εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίς δικαιώσει; καὶ τίς δοξάσει τὸν ἀτιμάζοντα τὴν ζωὴν αὐτοῦ;
Who will justify him that sinneth against his own soul? And who will honor him that dishonoreth his own life?
30
יֵשׁ דַּל נִכְבָּד בִּגְלַל שִׂכְלוֹ, וְיֵש נִכְבָּד בִּגְלַל עָשְׁרוֹ.
There is a poor person respected for his intelligence, and there are those respected because of his wealth.
Πτωχὸς δοξάζεται διʼ ἐπιστήμην αὐτοῦ, καὶ πλούσιος δοξάζεται διὰ τὸν πλοῦτον αὐτοῦ.
The poor man is honored for his skill, And the rich man is honored for his riches.
31
נִכְבָּד בְּעָשְׁרוֹ אֵיכָכָה, וְנִקְלֶה בְּעָנְיוֹ אֵיכָכָה. הַמִּתְכַּבֵּד בְּדַלּוּתוֹ, בְּעָשְׁרוֹ מִתְכַּבִּד יֹתֵר. וְהַנִּקְלֶה בְּעָשְׁרוֹ, בְּדַלּוּתוֹ נִקְלֶה יוֹתֵר.
A person respected in wealth, how thus [higher]? A man despised in poverty, how thus [lower]? He who is respected in poverty, in wealth he is further respected. And he who is held in disrepute in wealth, how much more also in poverty?
Ὁ δὲ δοξαζόμενος ἐν πτωχείᾳ, καὶ ἐν πλούτῳ ποσαχῶς; καὶ ὁ ἄδοξος ἐν πλούτῳ, καὶ ἐν πτωχείᾳ ποσαχῶς;
He that is honored in poverty, how much more in riches? And he that is dishonorable in riches, how much more in poverty?

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Variants

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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

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How the Septuagint is aligned

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The Greek word data

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About the texts

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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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