Textorah

Isaiah 63

1
מִי־זֶה בָּא מֵאֱדוֹם חֲמוּץ בְּגָדִים מִבָּצְרָה זֶה הָדוּר בִּלְבוּשׁוֹ צֹעֶה בְּרֹב כֹּחוֹ אֲנִי מְדַבֵּר בִּצְדָקָה רַב לְהוֹשִׁיעַ
'Who is this that cometh from Edom, with crimsoned garments from Bozrah? This that is glorious in his apparel, stately in the greatness of his strength?'--' I that speak in victory, mighty to save.'--
Τίς οὗτος ὁ παραγνόμενος ἐξ Ἐδὼμ, ἐρύθημα ἱματίων ἐκ Βοσόρ; οὕτως ὡραῖος ἐν στολῇ, βίᾳ μετὰ ἰσχύος; ἐγὼ διαλέγομαι δικαιοσύνην καὶ κρίσιν σωτηρίου.
Who is this that is come from Edom, [with] red garments from Bozrah? thus fair in his apparel, with mighty strength? I speak of righteousness and saving judgment.
2
מַדּוּעַ אָדֹם לִלְבוּשֶׁךָ וּבְגָדֶיךָ כְּדֹרֵךְ בְּגַת
'Wherefore is Thine apparel red, and Thy garments like his that treadeth in the winevat?'--
Διατί σου ἐρυθρὰ τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ τὰ ἐνδύματά σου ὡς ἀπὸ πατητοῦ ληνοῦ;
Wherefore are thy garments red, and thy raiment as [if fresh] from a trodden winepress?
3
פּוּרָה דָּרַכְתִּי לְבַדִּי וּמֵעַמִּים אֵין־אִישׁ אִתִּי וְאֶדְרְכֵם בְּאַפִּי וְאֶרְמְסֵם בַּחֲמָתִי וְיֵז נִצְחָם עַל־בְּגָדַי וְכָל־מַלְבּוּשַׁי אֶגְאָלְתִּי
'I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the peoples there was no man with Me; yea, I trod them in Mine anger, and trampled them in My fury; and their lifeblood is dashed against My garments, and I have stained all My raiment.
Πλήρης καταπεπατημένης, καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνὴρ μετʼ ἐμοῦ, καὶ κατεπάτησα αὐτοὺς ἐν θυμῷ μου, καὶ κατέθλασα αὐτοὺς ὡς γῆν, καὶ κατήγαγον τὸ αἷμα αὐτῶν εἰς γῆν.
I am full of trodden [grape], and of the nations there is not a man with me; and I trampled them in my fury, and dashed them to pieces as earth, and brought down their blood to the earth.
4
כִּי יוֹם נָקָם בְּלִבִּי וּשְׁנַת גְּאוּלַי בָּאָה
For the day of vengeance that was in My heart, and My year of redemption are come.
Ἡμέρα γὰρ ἀνταποδόσεως ἐπῆλθεν αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐνιαυτὸς λυτρώσεως πάρεστι.
For the day of recompense has come upon them, and the year of redemption is at hand.
5
וְאַבִּיט וְאֵין עֹזֵר וְאֶשְׁתּוֹמֵם וְאֵין סוֹמֵךְ וַתּוֹשַׁע לִי זְרֹעִי וַחֲמָתִי הִיא סְמָכָתְנִי
And I looked, and there was none to help, and I beheld in astonishment, and there was none to uphold; therefore Mine own arm brought salvation unto Me, and My fury, it upheld Me.
Καὶ ἐπέβλεψα, καὶ οὐκ ἦν βοηθός· καὶ προσενόησα, καὶ οὐθεὶς ἀντελαμβάνετο· καὶ ἐῤῥύσατο αὐτοὺς ὁ βραχίων μου, καὶ ὁ θυμός μου ἐπέστη.
And I looked, and there was no helper; and I observed, and none upheld: therefore my arm delivered them, and mine anger drew nigh.
6
וְאָבוּס עַמִּים בְּאַפִּי וַאֲשַׁכְּרֵם בַּחֲמָתִי וְאוֹרִיד לָאָרֶץ נִצְחָם
And I trod down the peoples in Mine anger, and made them drunk with My fury, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.'
Καὶ κατεπάτησα αὐτοὺς τῇ ὀργῇ μου, καὶ κατήγαγον τὸ αἷμα αὐτῶν εἰς γῆν.
And I trampled them in mine anger, and brought down their blood to the earth.
7
חַסְדֵי יְהוָה אַזְכִּיר תְּהִלֹּת יְהוָה כְּעַל כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־גְּמָלָנוּ יְהוָה וְרַב־טוּב לְבֵית יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר־גְּמָלָם כְּרַחֲמָיו וּכְרֹב חֲסָדָיו
I will make mention of the mercies of HaShem, and the praises of HaShem, according to all that HaShem hath bestowed on us; and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He hath bestowed on them according to His compassions, and according to the multitude of His mercies.
Τὸν ἔλεον Κυρίου ἐμνήσθην, τὰς ἀρετὰς Κυρίου ἐν πᾶσιν οἷς ἡμῖν ἀνταποδίδωσι· Κύριος κριτὴν ἀγαθὸς τῷ οἴκῳ Ἰσραὴλ, ἐπάγει ἡμῖν κατὰ τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ, καὶ κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ.
I remembered the mercy of the Lord, the praises of the Lord in all things wherein he recompenses us. The Lord is a good judge to the house of Israel; he deals with us according to his mercy, and according to the abundance of his righteousness.
8
וַיֹּאמֶר אַךְ־עַמִּי הֵמָּה בָּנִים לֹא יְשַׁקֵּרוּ וַיְהִי לָהֶם לְמוֹשִׁיעַ
For He said: 'Surely, they are My people, children that will not deal falsely'; so He was their Saviour.
Καὶ εἶπεν, οὐχ ὁ λαός μου; τέκνα οὐ μὴ ἀθετήσωσι· καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς εἰς σωτηρίαν
And he said, Is it not my people? the children surely will not be rebellious: and he became to them deliverance
9
בְּכָל־צָרָתָם לא לוֹ צָר וּמַלְאַךְ פָּנָיו הוֹשִׁיעָם בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ וּבְחֶמְלָתוֹ הוּא גְאָלָם וַיְנַטְּלֵם וַיְנַשְּׂאֵם כָּל־יְמֵי עוֹלָם
In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
ἐκ πάσης θλίψεως αὐτῶν· οὐ πρέσβυς, οὐδὲ ἄγγελος, ἀλλʼ αὐτὸς ἔσωσεν αὐτοὺς, διὰ τὸ ἀγαπᾷν αὐτοὺς καὶ φείδεσθαι αὐτῶν· αὐτὸς ἐλυτρώσατο αὐτοὺς, καὶ ἀνέλαβεν αὐτοὺς, καὶ ὕψωσεν αὐτοὺς πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τοῦ αἰῶνος·
out of all their affliction: not an ambassador, nor a messenger, but himself saved them, because he loved them and spared them: he himself redeemed them, and took them up, and lifted them up all the days of old.
10
וְהֵמָּה מָרוּ וְעִצְּבוּ אֶת־רוּחַ קָדְשׁוֹ וַיֵּהָפֵךְ לָהֶם לְאוֹיֵב הוּא נִלְחַם־בָּם
But they rebelled, and grieved His holy spirit; therefore He was turned to be their enemy, Himself fought against them.
Αὐτοὶ δὲ ἠπείθησαν, καὶ παρώξυναν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον αὐτοῦ· καὶ ἐστράφη αὐτοῖς εἰς ἔχθραν, αὐτὸς ἐπολέμησεν αὐτούς.
But they disobeyed, and provoked his Holy Spirit: so he turned to be an enemy, he himself contended against them.
11
וַיִּזְכֹּר יְמֵי־עוֹלָם מֹשֶׁה עַמּוֹ אַיֵּה הַמַּעֲלֵם מִיָּם אֵת רֹעֵי צֹאנוֹ אַיֵּה הַשָּׂם בְּקִרְבּוֹ אֶת־רוּחַ קָדְשׁוֹ
Then His people remembered the days of old, the days of Moses: 'Where is He that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is He that put His holy spirit in the midst of them?
Καὶ ἐμνήσθη ἡμερῶν αἰωνίων· ποῦ ὁ ἀναβιβάσας ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης τὸν ποιμένα τῶν προβάτων; ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ θεὶς ἐν αὐτοῖς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον;
Then he remembered the ancient days, [saying], Where is he that brought up from the sea the shepherd of the sheep? where is he that put his Holy Spirit in them?
12
מוֹלִיךְ לִימִין מֹשֶׁה זְרוֹעַ תִּפְאַרְתּוֹ בּוֹקֵעַ מַיִם מִפְּנֵיהֶם לַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ שֵׁם עוֹלָם
That caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses? that divided the water before them, to make Himself an everlasting name?
ὁ ἀγαγὼν τῇ δεξιᾷ Μωσῆν, ὁ βραχίων τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ; κατίσχυσεν ὕδωρ ἀπὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ, ποιῆσαι ἑαυτῷ ὄνομα αἰώνιον.
who led Moses with his right hand, the arm of his glory? he forced the water [to separate] from before him, to make himself an everlasting name.
13
מוֹלִיכָם בַּתְּהֹמוֹת כַּסּוּס בַּמִּדְבָּר לֹא יִכָּשֵׁלוּ
That led them through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, without stumbling?
Ἤγαγεν αὐτοὺς διʼ ἀβύσσου, ὡς ἵππον διʼ ἐρήμου, καὶ οὐκ ἐκοπίασαν,
He led them through the deep, as a horse through the wilderness, and they fainted not,
14
כַּבְּהֵמָה בַּבִּקְעָה תֵרֵד רוּחַ יְהוָה תְּנִיחֶנּוּ כֵּן נִהַגְתָּ עַמְּךָ לַעֲשׂוֹת לְךָ שֵׁם תִּפְאָרֶת
As the cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of HaShem caused them to rest; so didst Thou lead Thy people, to make Thyself a glorious name.'
καὶ ὡς κτήνη διὰ πεδίου· κατέβη πνεῦμα παρὰ Κυρίου, καὶ ὡδήγησεν αὐτούς· οὕτως ἤγαγες τὸν λαόν σου ποιῆσαι σεαυτῷ ὄνομα δόξης.
and as cattle through a plain: the Spirit came down from the Lord, and guided them: thus thou leddest thy people, to make thyself a glorious name.
15
הַבֵּט מִשָּׁמַיִם וּרְאֵה מִזְּבֻל קָדְשְׁךָ וְתִפְאַרְתֶּךָ אַיֵּה קִנְא͏ָתְךָ וּגְבוּרֹתֶךָ הֲמוֹן מֵעֶיךָ וְרַחֲמֶיךָ אֵלַי הִתְאַפָּקוּ
Look down from heaven, and see, even from Thy holy and glorious habitation; where is Thy zeal and Thy mighty acts, the yearning of Thy heart and Thy compassions, now restrained toward me?
Ἐπίστρεψον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ ἴδε ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ ἁγίου σου, καὶ δόξης σου· ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ ζῆλός σου καὶ ἡ ἰσχύς σου; ποῦ ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ἐλέους σου, καὶ οἰκτιρμῶν σου, ὅτι ἀνέσχου ἡμῶν;
Turn from heaven, and look from thy holy habitation and [from] thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength? where is the abundance of thy mercy and of thy compassions, that thou hast withholden thyself from us?
16
כִּי־אַתָּה אָבִינוּ כִּי אַבְרָהָם לֹא יְדָעָנוּ וְיִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יַכִּירָנוּ אַתָּה יְהוָה אָבִינוּ גֹּאֲלֵנוּ מֵעוֹלָם שְׁמֶךָ
For Thou art our Father; for Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not acknowledge us; Thou, O HaShem, art our Father, our Redeemer from everlasting is Thy name.
Σὺ γὰρ εἶ πατὴρ ἡμῶν, ὅτι Ἁβραὰμ οὐκ ἔγνω ἡμᾶς, καὶ Ἰσραὴλ οὐκ ἐπέγνω ἡμᾶς, ἀλλὰ σὺ Κύριε πατὴρ ἡμῶν ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς, ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς τὸ ὄνομά σου ἐφʼ ἡμᾶς ἐστι.
For thou art our Father; for [though] Abraham knew us not, and Israel did not acknowledge us, yet do thou, O Lord, our Father, deliver us: thy name has been upon us from the beginning.
17
לָמָּה תַתְעֵנוּ יְהוָה מִדְּרָכֶיךָ תַּקְשִׁיחַ לִבֵּנוּ מִיִּרְאָתֶךָ שׁוּב לְמַעַן עֲבָדֶיךָ שִׁבְטֵי נַחֲלָתֶךָ
O HaShem, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways, and hardenest our heart from Thy fear? Return for Thy servants' sake, the tribes of Thine inheritance.
Τί ἐπλάνησας ἡμᾶς, Κύριε, ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ σου; ἐσκλήρυνας τὰς καρδίας ἡμῶν, τοῦ μὴ φοβεῖσθαί σε; ἐπίστρεψον διὰ τοὺς δούλους σου, διὰ τὰς φυλὰς τῆς κληρονομίας σου,
Why hast thou caused us to err, O Lord, from thy way? [and] hast hardened our hearts, that we should not fear thee? Return for thy servants’ sake, for the sake of the tribes of thine inheritance,
18
לַמִּצְעָר יָרְשׁוּ עַם־קָדְשֶׁךָ צָרֵינוּ בּוֹסְסוּ מִקְדָּשֶׁךָ
Thy holy people they have well nigh driven out, our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary.
ἵνα μικρὸν κληρονομήσωμεν τοῦ ὄρους τοῦ ἁγίου σου.
that we may inherit a small part of thy holy mountain.
19
הָיִינוּ מֵעוֹלָם לֹא־מָשַׁלְתָּ בָּם לֹא־נִקְרָא שִׁמְךָ עֲלֵיהֶם לוּא־קָרַעְתָּ שָׁמַיִם יָרַדְתָּ מִפָּנֶיךָ הָרִים נָזֹלּוּ
We are become as they over whom Thou never borest rule, as they that were not called by Thy name. Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might quake at Thy presence.
Ἐγενόμεθα ὡς τὸ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς ὅτε οὐκ ἦρξας ἡμῶν, οὐδὲ ἐκλήθη τὸ ὄνομά σου ἐφʼ ἡμᾶς. Ἐὰν ἀνοίξῃς τὸν οὐρανὸν, τρόμος λήψεται ἀπὸ σοῦ ὄρη, καὶ τακήσονται,
We are become as at the beginning, when thou didst not rule over us, and thy name was not called upon us. If thou wouldest open the heaven, trembling will take hold upon the mountains from thee, and they shall melt,

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.

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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

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Words: lexicon and concordance

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

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

Variants

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

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

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

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

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

Rabbinic citations

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

How the Septuagint is aligned

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

The Greek word data

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

About the texts

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

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

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

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

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

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

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

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

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

Samaritan Pentateuch †

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

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

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

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

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

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

Ben Sira

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

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

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

Psalm 151

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

Tobit

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

1 Enoch

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

Jubilees

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

Lexicon and concordance data

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

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