Textorah

Ben Sira 7

1
אַל תַּעַשׂ רָעָה וְאַל יַשִּׂיגְךָ רָעָה, הַרְחֵק מֵעָוֹן וְיֵט מִמְּךָ.
Do not evil to thyself, and evil shall not (?) overtake thee; Keep far from iniquity, and it shall turn aside from thee.
Μὴ ποίει κακὰ, καὶ οὐ μὴ σε καταλάβῃ κακόν.
Do no evil, so shall no harm come unto thee.
2
Ἀπόστηθι ἀπὸ ἀδίκου, καὶ ἐκκλινεῖ ἀπὸ σοῦ.
Depart from the unjust, and iniquity shall turn away from thee.
3
אַל תִּזְרַע חֲרוּשֵׁי עָוֶל עַל אָח, פֶּן תִּקְצְרֵהוּ שִׁבְעָתָיִם.
Sow not upon the furrows of unrighteousness (?); Lest thou reap it sevenfold.
Υἱὲ μὴ σπεῖρε ἐπʼ αὔλακας ἀδικίας, καὶ οὐ μὴ θερίσῃς αὐτὰς ἑπταπλασίως.
My son, sow not upon the furrows of unrighteousness, And thou shalt not reap them sevenfold.
4
אַל תְּבַקֵּשׁ מֵאֵל מֶמְשֶׁלַת, וְכֵן מִמֶּלֶךְ מוֹשַׁב כָּבוֹד. אַל תִּצְטַדֵּק לִפְנֵי מֶלֶךְ, וּמִפְּנֵי מֶלֶךְ אַל תִּתְבּוֹנֵן.
Seek not of God dominion; Nor likewise of a king a seat of honour. Justify not thyself before God (H a king); And before a king profess not understanding.
Μὴ ζήτει παρὰ Κυρίου ἡγεμονίαν, μηδὲ παρὰ βασιλέως καθέδραν δόξης.
Seek not of the Lord preeminence, Neither of the king the seat of honor.
5
אַל תְּבַקֵּשׁ לִהְיוֹת מוֹשֵׁל, אִם אֵין לְךָ חַיִל לְהַשְׁבִּית זָדוֹן.
Seek not to be a ruler; If thou hast not ability to quell pride.
Μὴ δικαιοῦ ἔναντι Κυρίου, καὶ παρὰ βασιλεῖ μὴ σοφίζου·
Justify not thyself before the Lord; And boast not of thy wisdom before the king.
6
פֶּן תָגוּר מִפְּנֵי נָדִיב, וְנָתוּן בֶּצַע בִּתְמִימִיךָ.
Lest thou fear the person of the noble; And suffer lucre to corrupt thine integrity (?).
μὴ ζήτει γενέσθαι κριτὴς, μὴ οὐκ ἐξισχύσεις ἐξάραι ἀδικίας. μήποτε εὐλαβηθῇς ἀπὸ προσώπου δυνάστου, καὶ θήσεις σκάνδαλον ἐν εὐθύτητί σου.
Seek not to be judge, being not able to take away iniquity; Lest at any time thou fear the person of the mighty, And lay a stumbling block in the way of thy uprightness.
7
אַל תַּרְשִׁיעֲךָ בַּעֲדַת שַׁעֲרֵי אֵל, וְאַל תַּפִּילְךָ בַּקְּהִלָּה.
Condemn not thyself in the congregation at the gate (?); And cast not thyself down in the assembly.
Μὴ ἁμάρτανε εἰς πλῆθος πόλεως, καὶ μὴ καταβάλῃς σεαυτὸν ἐν ὄχλῳ.
Offend not against the multitude of a city, And then thou shalt not cast thyself down among the people.
8
אַל תִּקְשׁוֹר לְשָׁנוֹת חֵטְ, כִּי בְאַחַת לֹא תִנָּקֶה.
Conspire not to commit a second sin; For in one thou shalt not be unpunished.
Μὴ καταδεσμεύσῃς δὶς ἁμαρτίαν, ἐν γὰρ τῇ μιᾷ οὐκ ἀθῶος ἔσῃ.
Bind not one sin upon another; For in one thou shalt not be unpunished.
9
אַל תָּאִיץ בַּצָּבָא, מְלֶאכֶת עֲבֹדָה הִיא מֵאֵל נֶחֱלָקָה.
Loathe not appointed service of laborious work; For it hath been apportioned of God (?).
Μὴ εἴπῃς, τῷ πλήθει τῶν δώρων μου ἐπόψεται, καὶ ἐν τῷ προσενέγκαι με Θεῷ ὑψίστῳ προσδέξεται.
Say not, God will look upon the multitude of my oblations, And when I offer to the most high God, he will accept it.
10
אַל תִּתְקַצֵּר בַּתְּפִלָּה וּבִצְדָקָה אַל תִּתְעַבָּר.
Be not impatient (H short) in prayer; And in almsgiving hesitate not (?).
Μὴ ὀλιγοψυχήσῃς ἐν τῇ προσευχῇ σου, καὶ ἐλεημοσύνην ποιῆσαι μὴ παρίδῃς.
Be not fainthearted when thou makest thy prayer, And neglect not to give alms.
11
אַל תִּבֶז לֶאֱנוֹשׁ בְּמַר רוּחַ, זְכוֹר כִּי יֵשׁ מֵרִים וּמַשְׁפִּיל.
Despise not a man that is in bitterness of spirit; Remember that there is one that lifteth up and casteth down.
Μὴ καταγέλα ἄνθρωπον ὄντα ἐν πικρίᾳ ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ, ἔστι γὰρ ὁ ταπεινῶν καὶ ἀνυψῶν.
Laugh no man to scorn in the bitterness of his soul: For there is one which humbleth and exalteth.
12
אַל תַּחֲרוֹשׁ חָמָס עַל אָח, וְכֵן עַל רֵעַ וְחָבֵר יַחְדָּו.
Devise not injury against a brother; And likewise neither against a companion nor a neighbour.
Μὴ ἀροτρία ψεῦδος ἐπʼ ἀδελφῷ σου, μηδὲ φίλῳ τὸ ὅμοιον ποίει.
Devise not a lie against thy brother; Neither do the like to thy friend.
13
אַל תַּחְפֹּץ לְכַחֵש עַל כָּחַש, כִּי תִקְוָתוֹ לֹא תִנְעָם.
Love not to make any manner of (?) lie; For the consequence (H hope) thereof shall not be pleasant.
Μὴ θέλε ψεύδεσθαι πᾶν ψεῦδος, ὁ γὰρ ἐνδελεχισμὸς αὐτοῦ οὐκ εἰς ἀγαθόν.
Use not to make any manner of lie: For the custom thereof is not good.
14
אַל תְּסַוֵּר בַּעֲדַת שָׂרִים, וְאַל תִּישֶׁן דָּבָר בַּתְּפִלָּה.
Prate (?) not ( or Be not familiar) in a congregation of princes; And repeat (?) not a word in prayer.
Μὴ ἀδολέσχει ἐν πλήθει πρεσβυτέρων, καὶ μὴ δευτερώσῃς λόγον ἐν προσευχῇ σου.
Use not many words in a multitude of elders, And make not much babbling when thou prayest.
15
אַל תַּחְשׁוֹבְךָ בָּמֳתֵי עָם, זְכוֹר עִבָּרוֹן לֹא יִתְעַבָּר.
Esteem not thyself among the men of thy (?) people; Remember that wrath will not tarry (?).
Μὴ μισήσῃς ἐπίπονον ἐργασίαν, καὶ γεωργίαν ὑπὸ ὑψίστου ἐκτισμένην.
Hate not laborious work, Neither husbandry, which the most High hath ordained.
16
Μὴ προσλογίζου σεαυτὸν ἐν πλήθει ἁμαρτωλῶν·
Number not thyself among the multitude of sinners, But remember that wrath will not tarry long.
17
מְאֹד מְאֹד הַשְׁפִּיל גַּאֲוָה, כִּי תִקְוַת אֱנוֹשׁ רִמָּה. אַל תָּאִיץ לֵאמֹר לִי - פָרֶץ, גֹּל אֶל אֵל וּרְצֵה דַרְכּוֹ.
Abase pride very exceedingly; For the hope of man is the worm (H S). Be not in haste to say, A breach (?) is upon me ; Commit thyself unto God, and delight in his way.
Ταπείνωσον σφόδρα τὴν ψυχήν σου. 17aΜνήσθητι ὅτι ὀργὴ οὐ χρονιεῖ, 17bὅτι ἐκδίκησις ἀσεβοῦς πῦρ καὶ σκώληξ.
Humble thy soul greatly: For the vengeance of the ungodly is fire and worms.
18
אַל תָּמִיר אוֹהֵב בִּמְחִיר, וְאָח תָּלוּי בִּזְהַב אוֹפִיר.
Exchange not a friend at a price; Neither a brother that is attached ( or doubted) for gold of Ophir.
Μὴ ἀλλάξῃς φίλον ἕνεκεν ἀδιαφόρου, μήδʼ ἀδελφὸν γνήσιον ἐν χρυσίῳ Σουφείρ.
Change not a friend for any good by no means; Neither a faithful brother for the gold of Ophir.
19
אַל תִּמְאַס אִשָּׁה מַשְׁכֶּלֶת, וְטוֹבַת חֵן מִפְּנִינִים.
Despise ( or Reject) not a wise wife; Seeing she is well-favoured above rubies.
Μὴ ἀστόχει γυναικὸς σοφῆς καὶ ἀγαθῆς, καὶ γὰρ χάρις αὐτῆς ὑπὲρ τὸ χρυσίον.
Forego not a wise and good woman: For her grace is above gold.
20
אַל תָּרֵעַ עוֹבֵד אֱמֶת, וְכֵן שׁוֹמֵר נוֹחֵן נַפְשׁוֹ.
Evil entreat not a servant that laboureth truly (?); Nor a hireling that giveth his soul (?).
Μὴ κακώσῃς οἰκέτην ἐργαζόμενον ἐν ἀληθείᾳ, μηδὲ μίσθιον διδόντα ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ.
Whereas thy servant worketh truly, entreat him not evil, Nor the hireling that bestoweth himself wholly for thee.
21
עֶבֶד מַשְׂכִּיל חַבֵּב כְּנֶפֶש, וְאַל תִּמְנַע מִמֶּנוּ חֹפֶשׁ.
Love a wise servant as thyself: Withhold not liberty from him.
Οἰκέτην συνετὸν ἀγαπάτω σου ἡ ψυχὴ, μὴ στερήσῃς αὐτὸν ἐλευθερίας.
Let thy soul love a good servant, And defraud him not of liberty.
22
בְּהֵמָה לְךָ רְאֵה עֵינֶיךָ, וְאִם אֻמָּנָה הִיא הַעֲמִידָהּ.
Hast thou a beast? see that thine eye be upon it (?); And if it be trusty (?), keep it.
Κτήνη σοί ἐστιν; ἐπισκέπτου αὐτά· καὶ εἰ ἔστι σοι χρήσιμα, ἐμμενέτω σοι.
Hast thou cattle? have an eye to them: And if they be for thy profit, keep them with thee.
23
בָּנִים לְךָ יַסֵּר אוֹתָם, וְשָׂא לָהֶם נָשִׁים בִּנְעוּרֵיהֶם.
Hast thou sons? instruct them; And marry wives to them in their youth.
Τέκνα σοί ἐστι, παίδευσον αὐτὰ, καὶ κάμψον ἐκ νεότητος τὸν τράχηλον αὐτῶν.
Hast thou children? instruct them, And bow down their neck from their youth.
24
בָּנוֹת לְךָ נְצוֹר שְׁאֵרָם, וְאַל תָּאִיר אֲלֵיהֶם פָּנִים.
Hast thou daughters? guard their flesh; And make not thy face bright unto them.
Θυγατέρες σοί εἰσι; πρόσεχε τῷ σώματι αὐτῶν, καὶ μὴ ἱλαρώσῃς πρὸς αὐτὰς τὸ πρόσωπόν σου.
Hast thou daughters? have a care of their body, And show not thyself cheerful toward them.
25
הוֹצֵא בַת וְיֵצֵא עֵסֶק, וְאֶל גֶּבֶר נָבוֹן חַבְּרָהּ.
Give away a daughter, and away with a trouble (?); But join her to a man of understanding.
Ἔκδου θυγατέρα, καὶ ἔσῃ τετελεκὼς ἔργον μέγα, καὶ ἀνδρὶ συνετῷ δώρησαι αὐτήν.
Marry thy daughter, and so shalt thou have performed a weighty matter: But give her to a man of understanding.
26
אִשָּׁה לְךָ אַל תְּתַעֲבֶהָ, וּשְׂנוּאָה אַל תַּאֲמֵן בָּהּ.
Hast thou a wife? abominate (H) her not; Hast thou one that is hated? trust her not.
Γυνή σοι ἐστὶ κατὰ ψυχήν; μὴ ἐκβάλῃς αὐτήν.
Hast thou a wife after thy mind? forsake her not.
27
[בְּכָל לִבְּךָ כַּבֵּד לְאָבִיךָ, וְאֵם יוֹלַדְתְּךָ אַל תִּשֶּׁה.
With all thy heart fear . . . . . . . . . . *******
Ἐν ὅλῃ καρδίᾳ δόξασον τὸν πατέρα σου, καὶ μητρὸς ὠδῖνας μὴ ἐπιλάθῃ.
Honor thy father with thy whole heart, And forget not the sorrows of thy mother.
28
זְכוֹר לוּלֵי הֵם, לֹא בָאתָ לָעוֹלָם. וּמָה אַתָּה עוֹשֶׂה לָהֶם, שֶׁהֵם גּוֹמְלִים לָךְ].
Remember: If they were not, you would not have come to the world. And what you are doing to them, that they are your rearers.
Μνήσθητι ὅτι διʼ αὐτῶν ἐγενήθης, καὶ τί ἀνταποδώσεις αὐτοῖς καθὼς αὐτοὶ σοί;
Remember that thou wast begotten of them; And how canst thou recompense them the things that they have done for thee?
29
בְּכָל לִבְּך פְּחַד אִל, וְאֶת כֹּהֲנָיו הַקְדִישׁ.
With all your heart fear God; And his priests sanctify.
Ἐν ὅλῃ ψυχῇ σου εὐλαβοῦ τὸν Κύριον, καὶ τοὺς ἱερεῖς αὐτοῦ θαύμαζε.
Fear the Lord with all thy soul, And reverence his priests.
30
בְּכָל מְאֹדְךָ אֱהוֹב עוֹשֶׂךָ, וְאֶת מְשָׁרְתָיו לֹא תַעֲזֹב.
With all your means love your maker; And his servers do not forsake.
Ἐν ὅλῃ δυνάμει ἀγάπησον τὸν ποιήσαντά σε, καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ μὴ ἐγκαταλίπῃς.
Love him that made thee with all thy strength, And forsake not his ministers.
31
כַּבֵּד אֵל וַהֲדַר כֹּהֵן, וְתֵן חֶלְקָם כַּאֲשֶׁר צֻוֵּיתָה. לֶחֶם אַבִּירִים וּתְרוּמַת יָד, זִבְחֵי צֶדֶק וּתְרוּמַת קֹדֶשׁ.
Honor God and glorify a priest; Give their portions like you were commanded. Bread of heroes and gift of a hand; Meat of the righteous and gift of the holy one.
Φοβοῦ τὸν Κύριον, καὶ δόξασον ἱερέα, καὶ δὸς τὴν μερίδα αὐτῷ, καθὼς ἐντέταλταί σοι, ἀπαρχὴν, καὶ περὶ πλημμελείας, καὶ δόσιν βραχιόνων, καὶ θυσίαν ἁγιασμοῦ, καὶ ἀπαρχὴν ἁγίων.
Fear the Lord, and honor the priest: And give him his portion, as it is commanded thee: The firstfruits, and the trespass offering, and the gift of the shoulders, And the sacrifice of sanctification, and the firstfruits of the holy things.
32
וְגַם לְאֶבְיוֹן הוֹשִׁיט יָד, לְמַעַן תִּשְׁלַם בִּרְכָתֶךָ.
Also to the needy stretch out a hand; So that you blessing will be repaid.
Καὶ πτωχῷ ἔκτεινον τὴν χεῖρά σου, ἵνα τελειωθῇ ἡ εὐλογία σου.
And stretch thy hand unto the poor, That thy blessing may be perfected.
33
תֵּן מַתָּן לִפְנֵי כָל חָי, וְגַם מִמֵּת אַל תִּמְנַע חָסֶד.
Give a gift to all life; Also from a corpse do not withhold kindness.
Χάρις δόματος ἔναντι παντὸς ζῶντος, καὶ ἐπὶ νεκρῷ μὴ ἀποκωλύσῃς χάριν.
A gift hath grace in the sight of every man living; And for the dead detain it not.
34
אַל תִּתְאַחֵר מִבּוֹכִים, וְעִם אֲבֵלִים תִּתְאַבָּל.
Do not be late from ?criers?; And with a mourner, mourn.
Μὴ ὑστέρει ἀπὸ κλαιόντων, καὶ μετὰ πενθούντων πένθησον.
Fail not to be with them that weep, And mourn with them that mourn.
35
אַל תִּשָּׂא לֵב מֵאוֹהֵב, כִּי מִמֶּנוּ תֵּאָהֵב.
Do not lift [your] heart from a loved one; For from him you will be loved.
Μὴ ὄκνει ἐπισκέπτεσθαι ἄῤῥωστον, ἐκ γὰρ τῶν τοιούτων ἀγαπηθήσῃ.
Be not slow to visit the sick: For that shall make thee to be beloved.
36
בְּכָל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ זְכוֹר אַחֲרִית, וּלְעוֹלָם לֹא תַשְׁחֵת.
In all your actions remember the end; And never destroy.
Ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς λόγοις σου μιμνήσκου τὰ ἔσχατά σου, καὶ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεις.
Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember the end, And thou shalt never do amiss.

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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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