Textorah

Ezekiel 28

1
וַיְהִי דְבַר־יְהוָה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר
And the word of HaShem came unto me, saying:
Καὶ ἐγένετο λόγος Κυρίου πρὸς μὲ, λέγων,
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
2
בֶּן־אָדָם אֱמֹר לִנְגִיד צֹר כֹּה־אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהֹוִה יַעַן גָּבַהּ לִבְּךָ וַתֹּאמֶר אֵל אָנִי מוֹשַׁב אֱלֹהִים יָשַׁבְתִּי בְּלֵב יַמִּים וְאַתָּה אָדָם וְלֹא־אֵל וַתִּתֵּן לִבְּךָ כְּלֵב אֱלֹהִים
'Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyre: Thus saith the L-rd GOD: because thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said: I am a god, I sit in the seat of G-d, in the heart of the seas; yet thou art man, and not G-d, though thou didst set thy heart as the heart of G-d--
Καὶ σὺ υἱὲ ἀνθρώπου εἰπὸν τῷ ἄρχοντι Τύρου, τάδε λέλει Κύριος, ἀνθʼ οὗ ὑψώθη σου ἡ καρδία, καὶ εἶπας, Θεός εἰμι ἐγὼ, κατοικίαν Θεοῦ, καὶ ἔδωκας τὴν καρδίαν σου ὡς καρδίαν Θεοῦ.
And thou, son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus saith the Lord; Because thy heart has been exalted, and thou hast said, I am God, I have inhabited the dwelling of God in the heart of the sea; yet thou art man and not God, though thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God:
3
הִנֵּה חָכָם אַתָּה מדנאל מִדָּנִיֵּאל כָּל־סָתוּם לֹא עֲמָמוּךָ
Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel! there is no secret that they can hide from thee!
Μὴ σοφώτερος εἶ σὺ τοῦ Δανιήλ; ἢ σοφοὶ οὐκ ἐπαίδευσάν σε τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ αὐτῶν;
art thou wiser than Daniel? or have not the wise instructed thee with their knowledge?
4
בְּחָכְמָתְךָ וּבִתְבוּנָתְךָ עָשִׂיתָ לְּךָ חָיִל וַתַּעַשׂ זָהָב וָכֶסֶף בְּאוֹצְרוֹתֶיךָ
By thy wisdom and by thy discernment thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures;
Μὴ ἐν τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ σου ἢ τῇ φρονήσει σου ἐποίησας σεαυτῷ δύναμιν, καὶ χρυσίον καὶ ἀργύριον ἐν τοῖς θησαυροῖς σου;
Hast thou gained power for thyself by thine [own] knowledge or thine [own] prudence, and [gotten] gold and silver in thy treasures?
5
בְּרֹב חָכְמָתְךָ בִּרְכֻלָּתְךָ הִרְבִּיתָ חֵילֶךָ וַיִּגְבַּהּ לְבָבְךָ בְּחֵילֶךָ
In thy great wisdom by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches--
Ἐν τῇ πολλῇ ἐπιστήμῃ σου καὶ ἐμπορίᾳ σου ἐπλήθυνας δύναμίν σου, ὑψώθη ἡ καρδία σου ἐν τῇ δυνάμει σου.
By thy abundant knowledge and thy traffic thou hast multiplied thy power; thy heart has been lifted up by thy power.
6
לָכֵן כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה יַעַן תִּתְּךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ כְּלֵב אֱלֹהִים
Therefore thus saith the L-rd GOD: because thou hast set thy heart as the heart of G-d;
Διατοῦτο τάδε λέγει Κύριος, ἐπειδὴ δέδωκας τὴν καρδίαν σου ὡς καρδίαν Θεοῦ,
Therefore thus saith the Lord; Since thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God;
7
לָכֵן הִנְנִי מֵבִיא עָלֶיךָ זָרִים עָרִיצֵי גּוֹיִם וְהֵרִיקוּ חַרְבוֹתָם עַל־יְפִי חָכְמָתֶךָ וְחִלְּלוּ יִפְעָתֶךָ
Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.
ἀντὶ τούτου ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐπάγω ἐπὶ σὲ ἀλλοτρίους λοιμοὺς ἀπὸ ἐθνῶν, καὶ ἐκκενώσουσι τὰς μαχαίρας αὐτῶν ἐπὶ σὲ, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ κάλλος τῆς ἐπιστήμης σου, καὶ στρώσουσιν τὸ κάλλος σου εἰς ἀπώλειαν,
because of this, behold, I [will] bring on thee strange plagues from the nations; and they shall draw their swords against thee, and against the beauty of thy knowledge,
8
לַשַּׁחַת יוֹרִדוּךָ וָמַתָּה מְמוֹתֵי חָלָל בְּלֵב יַמִּים
They shall bring thee down to the pit; and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain, in the heart of the seas.
καὶ καταβιβάσουσί σε, καὶ ἀποθανῇ θανάτῳ τραυματιῶν ἐν καρδίᾳ θαλάσσης.
and they shall bring down thy beauty to destruction. And they shall bring thee down; and thou shalt die the death of the slain in the heart of the sea.
9
הֶאָמֹר תֹּאמַר אֱלֹהִים אָנִי לִפְנֵי הֹרְגֶךָ וְאַתָּה אָדָם וְלֹא־אֵל בְּיַד מְחַלְלֶיךָ
Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee: I am G-d? But thou art man, and not G-d, in the hand of them that defile thee.
Μὴ λέγων ἐρεῖς, Θεός εἰμι ἐγὼ, ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀναιρούντων σε; σὺ δὲ εἶ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ οὐ Θεός.
Wilt thou indeed say, I am God, before them that slay thee? whereas thou art man, and not God.
10
מוֹתֵי עֲרֵלִים תָּמוּת בְּיַד־זָרִים כִּי אֲנִי דִבַּרְתִּי נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה
Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers; for I have spoken, saith the L-rd GOD.'
Ἐν πλήθει ἀπεριτμήτων ἀπολῇ ἐν χερσὶν ἀλλοτρίων, ὅτι ἐγὼ ἐλάλησα, λέγει Κύριος.
Thou shalt perish by the hands of strangers among the multitude of the uncircumcised: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord.
11
וַיְהִי דְבַר־יְהוָה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר
Moreover the word of HaShem came unto me, saying:
Καὶ ἐγένετο λόγος Κυρίου πρὸς μὲ, λέγων,
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
12
בֶּן־אָדָם שָׂא קִינָה עַל־מֶלֶךְ צוֹר וְאָמַרְתָּ לּוֹ כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה אַתָּה חוֹתֵם תָּכְנִית מָלֵא חָכְמָה וּכְלִיל יֹפִי
'Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say unto him: Thus saith the L-rd GOD: Thou seal most accurate, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty,
υἱὲ ἀνθρώπου, λάβε θρῆνον ἐπὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα Τύρου, καὶ εἰπὸν αὐτῷ, τάδε λέγει Κύριος Κύριος, σὺ ἀποσφράγισμα ὁμοιώσεως,
Son of man, take up a lamentation for the prince of Tyre, and say to him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou art a seal of resemblance, and crown of beauty.
13
בְּעֵדֶן גַּן־אֱלֹהִים הָיִיתָ כָּל־אֶבֶן יְקָרָה מְסֻכָתֶךָ אֹדֶם פִּטְדָה וְיָהֲלֹם תַּרְשִׁישׁ שֹׁהַם וְיָשְׁפֵה סַפִּיר נֹפֶךְ וּבָרְקַת וְזָהָב מְלֶאכֶת תֻּפֶּיךָ וּנְקָבֶיךָ בָּךְ בְּיוֹם הִבָּרַאֲךָ כּוֹנָנוּ
thou wast in Eden the garden of G-d; every precious stone was thy covering, the carnelian, the topaz, and the emerald, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the carbuncle, and the smaragd, and gold; the workmanship of thy settings and of thy sockets was in thee, in the day that thou wast created they were prepared.
καὶ στέφανος κάλλους ἐν τῇ τρυφῇ τοῦ παραδείσου τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐγενήθης· πᾶντα λίθον χρηστὸν ἐνδέδεσαι, σάρδιον καὶ τοπάζιον, καὶ σμάραγδον καὶ ἄνθρακα, καὶ σάπφειρον καὶ ἴασπιν, καὶ ἀργύριον καὶ χρυσίον, καὶ λιγύριον καὶ ἀχάτην, καὶ ἀμέθυστον καὶ χρυσόλιθον, καὶ βηρύλλιον καὶ ὀνύχιον, καὶ χρυσίου ἐνέπλήσας τοὺς θησαυρούς σου καὶ τὰς ἀποθήκας σου ἐν σοί.
Thou wast in the delight of the paradise of God; thou hast bound upon thee every precious stone, the sardius, and topaz, and emerald, and carbuncle, and sapphire, and jasper, and silver, and gold, and ligure, and agate, and amethyst, and chrysolite, and beryl, and onyx: and thou hast filled thy treasures and thy stores in thee with gold.
14
אַתְּ־כְּרוּב מִמְשַׁח הַסּוֹכֵךְ וּנְתַתִּיךָ בְּהַר קֹדֶשׁ אֱלֹהִים הָיִיתָ בְּתוֹךְ אַבְנֵי־אֵשׁ הִתְהַלָּכְתָּ
Thou wast the far-covering cherub; and I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of G-d; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of stones of fire.
Ἀφʼ ἧς ἡμέρας ἐκτίσθης σὺ μετὰ τοῦ χερούβ, ἔθηκά σε ἐν ὄρει ἁγίῳ Θεοῦ, ἐγενήθης ἐν μέσῳ λίθων πυρίνων.
From the day that thou wast created thou [wast] with the cherub: I set thee on the holy mount of God; thou wast in the midst of the stones of fire.
15
תָּמִים אַתָּה בִּדְרָכֶיךָ מִיּוֹם הִבָּרְאָךְ עַד־נִמְצָא עַוְלָתָה בָּךְ
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee.
Ἐγενήθης σὺ ἄμωμος ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις σου, ἀφʼ ἧς ἡμέρας σὺ ἐκτίσθης ἕως εὑρέθη τὰ ἀδικήματα ἐν σοί.
Thou wast faultless in thy days, from the day that thou wast created, until iniquity was found in thee.
16
בְּרֹב רְכֻלָּתְךָ מָלוּ תוֹכְךָ חָמָס וַתֶּחֱטָא וָאֶחַלֶּלְךָ מֵהַר אֱלֹהִים וָאַבֶּדְךָ כְּרוּב הַסֹּכֵךְ מִתּוֹךְ אַבְנֵי־אֵשׁ
By the multitude of thy traffic they filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; therefore have I cast thee as profane out of the mountain of G-d; and I have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
Ἀπὸ πλήθους τῆς ἐμπορίας σου ἔπλησας τὰ ταμεῖά σου ἀνομίας, καὶ ἥμαρτες, καὶ ἐτραυματίσθης ἀπὸ ὄρους τοῦ Θεοῦ· καὶ ἤγαγέ σε τὸ χεροὺβ ἐκ μέσου λίθων πυρίνων.
Of the abundance of thy merchandise thou hast filled thy storehouses with iniquity, and hast sinned: therefore thou hast been cast down wounded from the mount of God, and the cherub has brought thee out of the midst of the stones of fire.
17
גָּבַהּ לִבְּךָ בְּיָפְיֶךָ שִׁחַתָּ חָכְמָתְךָ עַל־יִפְעָתֶךָ עַל־אֶרֶץ הִשְׁלַכְתִּיךָ לִפְנֵי מְלָכִים נְתַתִּיךָ לְרַאֲוָה בָךְ
Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness; I have cast thee to the ground, I have laid thee before kings, that they may gaze upon thee.
Ὑψώθη ἡ καρδία σου ἐπὶ τῷ κάλλει σου, διεφθάρη ἡ ἐπιστήμη σου μετὰ τοῦ κάλλους σου· διὰ πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν σου ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἔῤῥιψά σε, ἐναντίον βασιλέων ἔδωκά σε παραδειγματισθῆναι.
Thy heart has been lifted up because of thy beauty; thy knowledge has been corrupted with thy beauty: because of the multitude of thy sins I have cast thee to the ground, I have caused thee to be put to open shame before kings.
18
מֵרֹב עֲוֺנֶיךָ בְּעֶוֶל רְכֻלָּתְךָ חִלַּלְתָּ מִקְדָּשֶׁיךָ וָאוֹצִא־אֵשׁ מִתּוֹכְךָ הִיא אֲכָלַתְךָ וָאֶתֶּנְךָ לְאֵפֶר עַל־הָאָרֶץ לְעֵינֵי כָּל־רֹאֶיךָ
By the multitude of thine iniquities, in the unrighteousness of thy traffic, thou hast profaned thy sanctuaries; therefore have I brought forth a fire from the midst of thee, it hath devoured thee, and I have turned thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.
Διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν σου καὶ τῶν ἀδικιῶν τῆς ἐμπορίας σου, ἐβεβήλωσα τὰ ἱερά σου, καὶ ἐξάξω πῦρ ἐκ μέσου σου, τοῦτο καταφάγεταί σε· καὶ δώσω σε σποδὸν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς σου ἐναντίον πάντων τῶν ὁρώντων σε.
Because of the multitude of thy sins and the iniquities of thy merchandise, I have profaned thy sacred things; and I will bring fire out of the midst of thee, this shall devour thee; and I will make thee [to be] ashes upon thy land before all that see thee.
19
כָּל־יוֹדְעֶיךָ בָּעַמִּים שָׁמְמוּ עָלֶיךָ בַּלָּהוֹת הָיִיתָ וְאֵינְךָ עַד־עוֹלָם
All they that know thee among the peoples shall be appalled at thee; thou art become a terror, and thou shalt never be any more.'
Καὶ πάντες οἱ ἐπιστάμενοί σε ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσι στενάξουσιν ἐπὶ σέ· ἀπώλεια ἐγένου, καὶ οὐχ ὑπάρξεις ἔτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.
And all that know thee among the nations shall groan over thee: thou art gone to destruction, and thou shalt not exist anymore.
20
וַיְהִי דְבַר־יְהוָה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר
And the word of HaShem came unto me, saying:
Καὶ ἐγένετο λόγος Κυρίου πρὸς μὲ, λέγων,
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
21
בֶּן־אָדָם שִׂים פָּנֶיךָ אֶל־צִידוֹן וְהִנָּבֵא עָלֶיהָ
'Son of man, set thy face toward Zidon, and prophesy against it,
υἱὲ ἀνθρώπου, στήρισον τὸ πρόσωπόν σου ἐπὶ Σιδῶνα, καὶ προφήτευσον ἐπʼ αὐτὴν,
Son of man, set thy face against Sidon, and prophesy against it,
22
וְאָמַרְתָּ כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה הִנְנִי עָלַיִךְ צִידוֹן וְנִכְבַּדְתִּי בְּתוֹכֵךְ וְיָדְעוּ כִּי־אֲנִי יְהוָה בַּעֲשׂוֹתִי בָהּ שְׁפָטִים וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי בָהּ
and say: Thus saith the L-rd GOD: Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon, and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am HaShem, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her.
καὶ εἰπὸν, Τάδε λέγει Κύριος, ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐπὶ σέ Σιδὼν, καὶ ἐνδοξασθήσομαι ἐν σοί, καὶ γνώσῃ ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος, ἐν τῷ ποιῆσαί με ἐν σοὶ κρίματα, καὶ ἁγιασθήσομαι ἐν σοί.
and say, Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I am against thee, O Sidon; and I will be glorified in thee; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought judgments in thee, and I will be sanctified in thee.
23
וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי־בָהּ דֶּבֶר וָדָם בְּחוּצוֹתֶיהָ וְנִפְלַל חָלָל בְּתוֹכָהּ בְּחֶרֶב עָלֶיהָ מִסָּבִיב וְיָדְעוּ כִּי־אֲנִי יְהוָה
For I will send into her pestilence and blood in her streets; and the wounded shall fall in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am HaShem.
Αἷμα καὶ θάνατος ἐν ταῖς πλατείαις σου, καὶ πεσοῦνται τετραυματισμέμοι μαχαίραις ἐν σοὶ περικύκλῳ σου, καὶ γνώσονται διότι ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος.
Blood and death [shall be] in thy streets; and [men] wounded with swords shall fall in thee and on every side of thee; and they shall know that I am the Lord.
24
וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה עוֹד לְבֵית יִשְׂרָאֵל סִלּוֹן מַמְאִיר וְקוֹץ מַכְאִב מִכֹּל סְבִיבֹתָם הַשָּׁאטִים אוֹתָם וְיָדְעוּ כִּי אֲנִי אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה
And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor a piercing thorn of any that are round about them, that did have them in disdain; and they shall know that I am the L-rd GOD.
Καὶ οὐκ ἔσονται οὐκέτι ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ σκόλοψ πικρίας καὶ ἄκανθα ὀδύνης ἀπὸ τῶν περικύκλῳ αὐτῶν, τῶν ἀτιμασάντων αὐτοὺς, καὶ γνώσονται ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος.
And there shall no more be in the house of Israel a thorn of bitterness and a pricking briar proceeding from them that are round about them, who dishonored them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.
25
כֹּה־אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה בְּקַבְּצִי אֶת־בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל מִן־הָעַמִּים אֲשֶׁר נָפֹצוּ בָם וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי בָם לְעֵינֵי הַגּוֹיִם וְיָשְׁבוּ עַל־אַדְמָתָם אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לְעַבְדִּי לְיַעֲקֹב
Thus saith the L-rd GOD: When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the nations, then shall they dwell in their own land which I gave to My servant Jacob.
Τάδε λέγει Κύριος Κύριος, καὶ συνάξω τὸν Ἰσραὴλ ἐκ τῶν ἐθνῶν οὗ διεσκορπίσθησαν ἐκεῖ, καὶ ἁγιασθήσομαι ἐν αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐνώπιον τῶν λαῶν καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν·
Thus saith the Lord God; I will also gather Israel from the nations, among whom they have been scattered, and I will be sanctified among them, and before the peoples and nations: and they shall dwell upon their land, which I gave to my servant Jacob.
26
וְיָשְׁבוּ עָלֶיהָ לָבֶטַח וּבָנוּ בָתִּים וְנָטְעוּ כְרָמִים וְיָשְׁבוּ לָבֶטַח בַּעֲשׂוֹתִי שְׁפָטִים בְּכֹל הַשָּׁאטִים אֹתָם מִסְּבִיבוֹתָם וְיָדְעוּ כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם
And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell safely; when I have executed judgments upon all those that have them in disdain round about them; and they shall know that I am HaShem their G-d.'
Καὶ κατοικήσουσι ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς αὐτῶν, ἣν δέδωκα τῷ δούλῳ μου Ἰακὼβ, καὶ κατοικήσουσιν ἐπʼ αὐτῆς ἐν ἐλπίδι, καὶ οἰκοδομήσουσιν οἰκίας, καὶ φυτεύσουσιν ἀμπελῶνας, καὶ κατοικήσουσιν ἐν ἐλπίδι, ὅταν ποιήσω κρίμα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀτιμάσασιν αὐτοὺς ἐν τοῖς κύκλῳ αὐτῶν· καὶ γνώσονται ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς αὐτῶν καὶ ὁ Θεὸς τῶν πατέρων αὐτῶν.
Yea, they shall dwell upon it safely, and they shall build houses, and plant vineyards, and dwell securely, when I shall execute judgment on all that have dishonored them, [even] on those [that are] round about them; and they shall know that I am the Lord their God, and the God of their fathers.

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.