Textorah

Ben Sira 47

1
וגם אחריו עמד נתן, להתיצב לפני דוד.
And also after him arose Natan, to stand forth against David.
Καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο ἀνέστη Νάθαν προφητεύειν ἐν ἡμέραις Δαυίδ.
And after him rose up Nathan to prophesy in the time of David.
2
כי כחלב מורם מקדש, כן דוד מישראל.
For just as the suet is the highest of the holy offering, so too David from Israel.
Ὥσπερ στέαρ ἀφωρισμένον ἀπὸ σωτηρίου, οὕτως Δαυὶδ ἀπὸ τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ.
As is the fat taken away from the peace offering, So was David chosen out of the children of Israel.
3
לכפירים שחק כגדי, ולדבים כבני בשן.
With lions he played as with a goat, and with bears as a calf from the east.
Ἐν λέουσιν ἔπαισεν ὡς ἐν ἐρίφοις, καὶ ἐν ἄρκοις ὡς ἐν ἄρνασι προβάτων.
He played with lions as with kids, And with bears as with lambs.
4
בנעוריו הכה גבור, ויסר חרפת עולם. בהניפו ידו על קלע, וישבר תפארת גלית.
In his youth he struck down the warrior, and causing him eternal pain and shame; with a flick of his hand on the sling, and he broke the majesty of Golyat.
Ἐν νεότητι αὐτοῦ οὐχὶ ἀπέκτεινε γίγαντα, καὶ ἐξῇρεν ὀνειδισμὸν ἐκ λαοῦ, ἐν τῷ ἐπᾶραι χεῖρα ἐν λίθῳ σφενδόνης, καὶ καταβαλεῖν γαυρίαμα τοῦ Γολιάθ;
Slew he not a giant, when he was yet but young? And did he not take away reproach from the people, When he lifted up his hand with the stone in the sling, And beat down the boasting of Goliath?
5
כי קרא אל אל עליון, ויתן בימינו עז. להדוף את איש יודע מלחמות, ולהרים את קרן ישראל.
For he called to God the Highest, and He gave strength in his right hand; to hold back a man knowing in war, and to raise the horn of Israel.
Ἐπεκαλέσατο γὰρ Κύριον τὸν ὕψιστον, καὶ ἔδωκεν ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ κράτος ἐξᾶραι ἄνθρωπον δυνατὸν ἐν πολέμῳ, ἀνυψῶσαι κέρας λαοῦ αὐτοῦ.
For he called upon the most high Lord; And he gave him strength in his right hand To slay that mighty warrior, And set up the horn of his people.
6
על כן ענו לו בנות, ויכנוהו ברבבה. בעטותו צניף נלחם, ומסביב הכניע צר.
Thus the girls sang to him, and established him with "ten thousand." When crowned in a turban he fought, and all around him subjugated enemies.
Οὕτως ἐν μυριάσιν ἐδόξασεν αὐτὸν, καὶ ᾔνεσεν αὐτὸν ἐν εὐλογίαις Κυρίου, ἐν τῷ φέρεσθαι αὐτῷ διάδημα δόξης.
So the people honored him with ten thousands, And praised him in the blessings of the Lord In that he gave him a crown of glory.
7
ויתן בפלשתים ערים, ועד היום שבר קרנם.
And he went against the Philistine foe, and to this day shattered their horn.
Ἐξέτριψε γὰρ ἐχθροὺς κυκλόθεν, καὶ ἐξουδένωσε Φυλιστιεὶμ τοὺς ὑπεναντίους· ἕως σήμερον συνετριψεν αὐτῶν κέρας.
For he destroyed the enemies on every side, And brought to nought the Philistines his adversaries, And broke their horn in sunder unto this day.
8
בכל מעשהו נתן הודות, לאל עליון באמרי כבוד. בכל לבו אוהב עשהו, וכבל יום הודה לו בזמירות.
In all his deeds he gave thanks, to God the Highest with words of glory. In all his heart he loved his Maker, and every day he thanked him with music.
Ἐν παντὶ ἔργῳ αὐτοῦ ἔδωκεν ἐξομολόγησιν· ἁγίῳ ὑψίστῳ ῥήματι δόξης ἐν πάσῃ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ ὕμνησε, καὶ ἠγάπησε τὸν ποιήσαντα αὐτόν.
In all his works he praised the Holy One most high with words of glory; With his whole heart he sang songs, And loved him that made him.
9
בגינות שיר הכין לפני מזבח, וקול מזמור ונבלים תקן.
Melodies, songs, he established for the temple, and the sound of psalms and harps he made.
Καὶ ἔστησε ψαλτῳδοὺς κατέναντι τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου, καὶ ἐξ ἤχου αὐτῶν γλυκαίνει μέλη.
He set singers also before the altar, That by their voices they might make sweet melody, And daily sing praises in their songs.
10
ויתן לחגים בכל שנה ושנה, הוד פאר וכבוד. בהללו את שם קדשו, לפני בקר ירן משפט.
And he gave splendor and beauty and honor to the festivals year after year; as he blessed the Holy Name, before the morning he raised justice.
Ἔδωκεν ἐν ἐορταῖς εὐπρέπειαν, καὶ ἐκόσμησε καιροὺς μέχρι συντελείας· ἐν τῷ αἰνεῖν αὐτοὺς τὸ ἅγιον ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀπὸ πρωῒ ἠχεῖν τὸ ἁγίασμα.
He beautified their feasts, And set in order the solemn times until the end, That they might praise his holy name, And that the temple might sound from morning.
11
גם יהוה העביר פשעו, וירם לעולם קרנו. ויתן לו חוק ממלכת, וכסאו הכין עד ירושלים.
Also ADONAI passed over his transgression, and He raised his horn forever; and He gave him a law of monarchy, and his throne He established up to Jerusalem.
Κύριος ἀφεῖλε τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἀυτοῦ, καὶ ἀνύψωσεν εἰς αἰῶνα τὸ κέρας αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ διαθήκην βασιλέων καὶ θρόνον δόξης ἐν τῷ Ἰσραήλ.
The Lord took away his sins, And exalted his horn forever: He gave him a covenant of kings, And a throne of glory in Israel.
12
וּבַעֲבוּרוֹ עָמַד אַחֲרָיו, בֵּן מַשְׂכִּיל שׁוֹכֵן לָבֶטַח.
And on his account arose after him a wise son, dwelling in security.
Μετὰ τούτου ἀνέστη υἱὸς ἐπιστήμων, καὶ διʼ αὐτὸν κατέλυσεν ἐν πλατυσμῷ.
After him rose up a wise son, And for his sake he dwelt at large.
13
שְׁלֹמֹה מלך בימי שלוה, ואל הניח לו מסביב. אשר הכין בית לשמו, ויצב לעד מקדש.
Shlomo was king in prosperous days, and God caused him quiet all around. He who built a house for His name, and he founded an eternal Sanctuary.
Σαλωμὼν ἐβασίλευσεν ἐν ἡμέραις εἰρήνης, ᾧ ὁ Θεὸς κατέπαυσε κυκλόθεν, ἵνα στήσῃ οἶκον ἐπʼ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἑτοιμάσῃ ἁγίασμα εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.
Solomon reigned in a peaceable time, and was honored; For God made all quiet round about him, That he might build a house in his name, And prepare his sanctuary forever.
14
מה חכמת בנעוריך, ותצף כיאר מוסר.
How wise were you in your youth! Your instruction flowed like the Nile!
Ὡς ἐσοφίσθης ἐν νεότητί σου, καὶ ἐνεπλήσθης ὡς ποταμὸς συνέσεως.
How wise wast thou in thy youth, And, as a flood, filled with understanding!
15
Γῆν ἐπεκάλυψεν ἡ ψυχή σου, καὶ ἐνέπλησας ἐν παραβολαῖς αἰνιγμάτων.
Thy soul covered the whole earth, And thou filledst it with dark parables.
16
ארץ כסית בחכמתך, ותקלס במרום שירה.
Land covered in Your wisdom, and Your song praised on the heights.
Εἰς νήσους πόῤῥω ἀφίκετο τὸ ὄνομά σου, καὶ ἠγαπήθης ἐν τῇ εἰρήνῃ σου.
Thy name went far unto the islands; And for thy peace thou wast beloved.
17
בשיר משל חידה ומליצה, עמים הסערתה.
With song, parable, riddle, and quote, all the people were amazed.
Ἐν ᾠδαῖς καὶ παροιμίαις καὶ παραβολαῖς, καὶ ἐν ἑρμηνείαις ἀπεθαύμασάν σε χῶραι.
The countries marveled at thee for thy songs, And proverbs, and parables, and interpretations.
18
נקראת בשם הנכבד, הנקרא על ישראל. ותצבר כברזל זהב, וכעפרת הרבית כסף.
You were called in the Glorious Name, that which was called over Israel; and amassed gold like iron, and like lead multiplied silver.
Ἐν ὀνόματι Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἐπικεκλημένου Θεοῦ Ἰσραὴλ, συνήγαγες ὡς κασσίτερον τὸ χρυσίον, καὶ ὡς μόλιβδον ἐπλήθυνας ἀργύριον.
By the name of the Lord God, Which is called the Lord God of Israel, Thou didst gather gold as tin, And didst multiply silver as lead.
19
ותתן לנשים כסלך, ותמשילם בגויתך.
And you gave your lust to women, and they ruled you in your pride.
Παρενέκλινας τὰς λαγόνας σου γυναιξὶ, καὶ ἐνεξουσιάσθης ἐν τῷ σώματί σου.
Thou didst bow thy loins unto women, And by thy body thou wast brought into subjection.
20
ותתן מום בכבודך, ותחלל את יצועיך. להביא אף על צאצאיך, ואנחה על משכבך.
And you brought a blemish on your glory, and profaned your bead, to bring anger on your descendants, and moaning upon your deathbead.
Ἔδωκας μῶμον ἐν τῇ δόξῃ σου, καὶ ἐβεβήλωσας τὸ σπέρμα σου, ἐπαγαγεῖν ὀργὴν ἐπὶ τὰ τέκνα σου, καὶ κατενύγην ἐπὶ τῇ ἀφροσύνῃ σου,
Thou didst stain thy honor, And pollute thy seed: So that thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, And wast grieved for thy folly.
21
לחלק העם לשני שבטים, ומאפרים ממלכת חמס.
To a portion of the people to two tribes, and from Ephraim a kingdom of violence.
γενέσθαι δίχα τυραννίδα, καὶ ἐξ Ἐφραὶμ ἄρξαι βασιλείαν ἀπειθῆ.
So the kingdom was divided, And out of Ephraim ruled a rebellious kingdom.
22
אבל אל לא יטוש חסד, ולא יפיל מדבריו ארצה. לא יכרית לבחיריו נין ונכד, וזרע אובהו לא ישמיד. ויתן ליעקב שארית, ולבית דוד ממנו שרש. וישכב שלמה מיושש, ויעזב אחריו מנון.
But God will not forsake piety, and will not let His words fall to the ground; He will not cut off from His chosen grandson or great-grandson, and the seed of His beloved He will not destroy. And He gave to Yaakov a remnant, and to the house of David a root from them; and Shlomo lay down to die hopeless, and help withered from him.
Ὁ δὲ Κύριος οὐ μὴ καταλίπῃ τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὐ μη διαφθαρῇ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ· οὐδὲ μὴ ἐξαλείψῃ ἐκλεκτοῦ ἔκγονα, καὶ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος αὐτὸν οὐ μὴ ἐξάρῃ· καὶ τῷ Ἰακὼβ ἔδωκε κατάλειμμα, καὶ τῷ Δαυὶδ ἐξ αὐτοῦ ῥίζαν.
But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, Neither shall any of his works perish, Neither will he abolish the posterity of his elect, And the seed of him that loveth him he will not take away: Wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, And out of him a root unto David.
23
רחב אולת וחסר בינה, רחבעם הפריע בעצתו עם. עד אשר קם, אל יהי לו זכר. ירבעם בן נבט, אשר חטא והחטיא את ישראל. ויתן לאפרים מכשול, להדיחם מאדמתם. ותגדל חטאתו מאד, ולכל רעה התמכר.
Wide in stupidity and lacking in wisdom, Reḥov'am whose counsel made the people unruly; until one arose – may he have no memory! – Yerov'am son on Nevaṭ, who sinned and caused sin to Israel. And he gave to Ephraim a stumbling-block, to force them from their land; and he increased his sin greatly, and to all evil he was addicted.
Καὶ ἀνεπαύσατο Σαλωμὼν μετὰ τῶν πατέρων· καὶ κατέλιπε μετʼ αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτοῦ, λαοῦ ἀφροσύνην καὶ ἐλασσούμενον συνέσει, Ῥοβοὰμ, ὃς ἀπέστησε λαὸν ἐκ βουλῆς αὐτοῦ· καὶ Ἱεροβοὰμ υἱὸν Ναβὰτ, ὃς ἐξήμαρτε τὸν Ἰσραὴλ, καὶ ἔδωκε τῷ Ἐφραὶμ ὁδὸν ἁμαρτίας.
Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, And of his seed he left behind him Rehoboam, Even the foolishness of the people, and one that had no understanding, Who turned away the people through his counsel. There was also Jeroboam the son of Nebat, Who caused Israel to sin, And showed Ephraim the way of sin:
24
Καὶ ἐπληθύνθησαν αἱ ἁμαρτίαι αὐτῶν σφόδρα, ἀποστῆσαι αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς αὐτῶν.
And their sins were multiplied exceedingly, That they were driven out of the land.
25
Καὶ πᾶσαν πονηρίαν ἐξεζήτησαν, ἕως ἐκδίκησις ἔλθῃ ἐπʼ αὐτούς.
For they sought out all wickedness, Till the vengeance came upon them.

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.

† Licensed for non-commercial use only. Full credits and licences: Credits and licences.