Textorah

Lamentations 4

1
אֵיכָה יוּעַם זָהָב יִשְׁנֶא הַכֶּתֶם הַטּוֹב תִּשְׁתַּפֵּכְנָה אַבְנֵי־קֹדֶשׁ בְּרֹאשׁ כָּל־חוּצוֹת
How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The hallowed stones are poured out at the head of every street.
ΑΛΕΦ. Πῶς ἀμαυρωθήσεται χρυσίον, ἀλλοιωθήσεται τὸ ἀργύριον τὸ ἀγαθόν; ἐξεχύθησαν λίθοι ἅγιοι ἐπʼ ἀρχῆς πασῶν ἐξόδων.
How will the gold be tarnished, [And] the fine silver changed! The sacred stones have been poured forth At the top of all the streets.
2
בְּנֵי צִיּוֹן הַיְקָרִים הַמְסֻלָּאִים בַּפָּז אֵיכָה נֶחְשְׁבוּ לְנִבְלֵי־חֶרֶשׂ מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵי יוֹצֵר
The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
ΒΗΘ. Οἱ υἱοὶ Σιὼν οἱ τίμιοι, οἱ ἐπῃρμένοι ἐν χρυσίῳ, πῶς ἐλογίσθησαν εἰς ἀγγεῖα ὀστράκινα, ἔργα χειρῶν κεραμέως;
The precious sons of Zion, Who were equaled in value with gold, How are they counted as earthen vessels, The works of the hands of the potter!
3
גַּם־תנין תַּנִּים חָלְצוּ שַׁד הֵינִיקוּ גּוּרֵיהֶן בַּת־עַמִּי לְאַכְזָר כי ענים כַּיְעֵנִים בַּמִּדְבָּר
Even the jackals draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones; the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
ΓΙΜΕΛ. Καί γε δράκοντες ἐξέδυσαν μαστοὺς, ἐθήλασαν σκύμνοι αὐτῶν θυγατέρας λαοῦ μου εἰς ἀνίατον, ὡς στρουθίον ἐν ἐρήμῳ.
Nay, serpents have drawn out the breasts, They give suck to their young, The daughters of my people are incurably cruel, As an ostrich in a desert.
4
דָּבַק לְשׁוֹן יוֹנֵק אֶל־חִכּוֹ בַּצָּמָא עוֹלָלִים שָׁאֲלוּ לֶחֶם פֹּרֵשׂ אֵין לָהֶם
The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask bread, and none breaketh it unto them.
ΔΑΛΕΘ. Ἐκολλήθη ἡ γλῶσσα θηλάζοντος πρὸς τὸν φάρυγγα αὐτοῦ ἐν δίψει, νήπια ᾔτησαν ἄρτον, ὁ διακλῶν οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτοῖς.
The tongue of the sucking child Cleaves to the roof of its mouth for thirst: The little children ask for bread, [And] there is none to break [it] to them.
5
הָאֹכְלִים לְמַעֲדַנִּים נָשַׁמּוּ בַּחוּצוֹת הָאֱמֻנִים עֲלֵי תוֹלָע חִבְּקוּ אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת
They that did feed on dainties are desolate in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.
Η. Οἱ ἔσθοντες τὰς τρυφὰς ἠφανίσθησαν ἐν ταῖς ἐξόδοις, οἱ τιθηνούμενοι ἐπὶ κόκκων περιεβάλλοντο κοπρίας.
They that feed on dainties Are desolate in the streets: They that used to be nursed in scarlet Have clothed themselves with dung.
6
וַיִּגְדַּל עֲוֺן בַּת־עַמִּי מֵחַטַּאת סְדֹם הַהֲפוּכָה כְמוֹ־רָגַע וְלֹא־חָלוּ בָהּ יָדָיִם
For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands fell upon her.
ΟΥΑΥ. Καὶ ἐμεγαλύνθη ἀνομία θυγατρὸς λαοῦ μου ὑπὲρ ἀνομίας Σοδόμων τῆς κατεστραμμένης ὥσπερ σπουδὴ, καὶ οὐκ ἐπόνεσαν ἐν αὐτῇ χεῖρας.
And the iniquity of the daughter of my people has been increased Beyond the iniquities of Sodom, [The city] that was overthrown very suddenly, And none labored against her [with their] hands.
7
זַכּוּ נְזִירֶיהָ מִשֶּׁלֶג צַחוּ מֵחָלָב אָדְמוּ עֶצֶם מִפְּנִינִים סַפִּיר גִּזְרָתָם
Her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was as of sapphire;
ΖΑΙΝ. Ἐκαθαριώθησαν Ναζιραῖοι αὐτῆς ὑπὲρ χιόνα, ἔλαμψαν ὑπὲρ γάλα, ἐπυρώθησαν, ὑπὲρ λίθου σαπφείρου τὸ ἀπόσπασμα αὐτῶν.
Her Nazirites were made purer than snow, They were whiter than milk, They were purified [as] with fire, Their polishing was superior to sapphire stone.
8
חָשַׁךְ מִשְּׁחוֹר תָּאֳרָם לֹא נִכְּרוּ בַּחוּצוֹת צָפַד עוֹרָם עַל־עַצְמָם יָבֵשׁ הָיָה כָעֵץ
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets; their skin is shrivelled upon their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
ΗΘ. Ἐσκότασεν ὑπὲρ ἀσβόλην τὸ εἶδος αὐτῶν, οὐκ ἐπεγνώσθησαν ἐν ταῖς ἐξόδοις· ἐπάγη δέρμα αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὰ ὀστέα αὐτῶν, ἐξηράνθησαν, ἐγενήθησαν ὥσπερ ξύλον.
Their countenance is become blacker than smoke; They are not known in the streets: Their skin has cloven to their bones; They are withered, they are become as a stick.
9
טוֹבִים הָיוּ חַלְלֵי־חֶרֶב מֵחַלְלֵי רָעָב שֶׁהֵם יָזוּבוּ מְדֻקָּרִים מִתְּנוּבֹת שָׂדָי
They that are slain with the sword are better than they that are slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through, for want of the fruits of the field.
ΤΗΘ. Καλοὶ ἦσαν οἱ τραυματίαι ῥομφαίας, ἢ οἱ τραυματίαι λιμοῦ· ἐπορεύθησαν ἐκκεκεντημένοι ἀπὸ γεννημάτων ἀγρῶν.
The slain with the sword were better Than they that were slain with hunger: They have departed, Pierced through from [want of] the fruits of the field.
10
יְדֵי נָשִׁים רַחֲמָנִיּוֹת בִּשְּׁלוּ יַלְדֵיהֶן הָיוּ לְבָרוֹת לָמוֹ בְּשֶׁבֶר בַּת־עַמִּי
The hands of women full of compassion have sodden their own children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
ΙΩΔ. Χεῖρες γυναικῶν οἰκτιρμόνων ἥψησαν τὰ παιδία αὐτῶν, ἐγενήθησαν εἰς βρῶσιν αὐταῖς, ἐν τῷ συντρίμματι τῆς θυγατρὸς τοῦ λαοῦ μου.
The hands of tenderhearted women Have sodden their own children: They became meat for them In the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11
כִּלָּה יְהוָה אֶת־חֲמָתוֹ שָׁפַךְ חֲרוֹן אַפּוֹ וַיַּצֶּת־אֵשׁ בְּצִיּוֹן וַתֹּאכַל יְסוֹדֹתֶיהָ
HaShem hath accomplished His fury, He hath poured out His fierce anger; and He hath kindled a fire in Zion, which hath devoured the foundations thereof.
ΧΑΦ. Συνετέλεσε Κύριος θυμὸν αὐτοῦ, ἐξέχεε θυμὸν ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀνῆψε πῦρ ἐν Σιὼν, καὶ κατέφαγε τὰ θεμέλια αὐτῆς.
The Lord has accomplished his wrath; He has poured out his fierce anger, And has kindled a fire in Zion, And it has devoured her foundations.
12
לֹא הֶאֱמִינוּ מַלְכֵי־אֶרֶץ וכל כֹּל יֹשְׁבֵי תֵבֵל כִּי יָבֹא צַר וְאוֹיֵב בְּשַׁעֲרֵי יְרוּשָׁלָ͏ִם
The kings of the earth believed not, neither all the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and the enemy would enter into the gates of Jerusalem.
ΛΑΜΕΔ. Οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν βασιλεῖς γῆς, πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες τὴν οἰκουμένην, ὅτι εἰσελεύσεται ἐχθρὸς καὶ ἐκθλίβων διὰ τῶν πυλῶν Ἱερουσαλήμ.
The kings of the earth, [Even] all that dwell in the world, Believed not that an enemy and oppressor would enter Through the gates of Jerusalem.
13
מֵחַטֹּאת נְבִיאֶיהָ עֲוֺנוֹת כֹּהֲנֶיהָ הַשֹּׁפְכִים בְּקִרְבָּהּ דַּם צַדִּיקִים
It is because of the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her.
ΜΗΜ. Ἐξ ἁμαρτιῶν προφητῶν αὐτῆς, ἀδικιῶν ἱερέων αὐτῆς, τῶν ἐκχεόντων αἷμα δίκαιον ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῆς.
For the sins of her prophets, [And] iniquities of her priests, Who shed righteous blood In the midst of her,
14
נָעוּ עִוְרִים בַּחוּצוֹת נְגֹאֲלוּ בַּדָּם בְּלֹא יוּכְלוּ יִגְּעוּ בִּלְבֻשֵׁיהֶם
They wander as blind men in the streets, they are polluted with blood, so that men cannot touch their garments.
ΝΟΥΝ. Ἐσαλεύθησαν ἐγρήγοροι αὐτῆς ἐν ταῖς ἐξόδοις, ἐμολύνθησαν ἐν αἵματι ἐν τῷ μὴ δύνασθαι αὐτοὺς, ἥψαντο ἐνδυμάτων αὐτῶν.
Her watchmen staggered in the streets, They were defiled with blood in their weakness, They touched their raiment [with it].
15
סוּרוּ טָמֵא קָרְאוּ לָמוֹ סוּרוּ סוּרוּ אַל־תִּגָּעוּ כִּי נָצוּ גַּם־נָעוּ אָמְרוּ בַּגּוֹיִם לֹא יוֹסִיפוּ לָגוּר
'Depart ye! unclean!' men cried unto them, 'Depart, depart, touch not'; yea, they fled away and wandered; men said among the nations: 'They shall no more sojourn here.'
ΣΑΜΕΧ. Ἀπόστητε ἀκαθάρτων, καλέσατε αὐτοὺς, ἀπόστητε, ἀπόστητε, μὴ ἅπτεσθε, ὅτι ἀνήφθησαν, καί γε ἐσαλεύθησαν· εἴπατε ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, οὐ μὴ προσθῶσι τοῦ παροικεῖν.
Depart ye from the unclean ones: Call ye them: depart, depart, touch [them] not: For they are on fire, yea, they stagger: Say ye among the nations, They shall no more sojourn [there].
16
פְּנֵי יְהוָה חִלְּקָם לֹא יוֹסִיף לְהַבִּיטָם פְּנֵי כֹהֲנִים לֹא נָשָׂאוּ זקנים וּזְקֵנִים לֹא חָנָנוּ
The anger of HaShem hath divided them; He will no more regard them; they respected not the persons of the priests, they were not gracious unto the elders.
ΑΙΝ. Πρόσωπον Κυρίου μερὶς αὐτῶν, οὐ προσθήσει ἐπιβλέψαι αὐτοῖς· πρόσωπον ἱερέων οὐκ ἔλαβον, προφήτας οὐκ ἠλέησαν.
The presence of the Lord [was] their portion; [But] he will not again look upon them: They regarded not the person of the priests, They pitied not the prophets.
17
עודינה עוֹדֵינוּ תִּכְלֶינָה עֵינֵינוּ אֶל־עֶזְרָתֵנוּ הָבֶל בְּצִפִּיָּתֵנוּ צִפִּינוּ אֶל־גּוֹי לֹא יוֹשִׁעַ
As for us, our eyes do yet fail for our vain help; in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save.
ΦΗ. Ἔτι ὄντων ἡμῶν ἐξέλιπον οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ ἡμῶν, εἰς τὴν βοήθειαν ἡμῶν μάταια ἀποσκοπευόντων ἡμῶν.
While we yet lived our eyes failed, While we looked in vain for our help. We looked to a nation that could not save.
18
צָדוּ צְעָדֵינוּ מִלֶּכֶת בִּרְחֹבֹתֵינוּ קָרַב קִצֵּינוּ מָלְאוּ יָמֵינוּ כִּי־בָא קִצֵּינוּ
They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our broad places; our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.
ΤΣΑΔΗ. Ἀπεσκοπεύσαμεν εἰς ἔθνος οὐ σῶζον, ἐθηρεύσαμεν μικροὺς ἡμῶν, τοῦ μὴ πορεύεσθαι ἐν ταῖς πλατείαις ἡμῶν.
We have hunted [for] our little ones, That they should not walk in our streets. Our time has drawn nigh, Our days are fulfilled, Our time is come.
19
קַלִּים הָיוּ רֹדְפֵינוּ מִנִּשְׁרֵי שָׁמָיִם עַל־הֶהָרִים דְּלָקֻנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר אָרְבוּ לָנוּ
Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heaven; they chased us upon the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
ΚΩΦ. Ἤγγικεν ὁ καιρὸς ἡμῶν, ἐπληρώθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι ἡμῶν, πάρεστιν ὁ καιρὸς ἡμῶν. Κοῦφοι ἐγένοντο οἱ διώκοντες ἡμᾶς ὑπὲρ ἀετοὺς οὐρανοῦ, ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρέων ἐξέπτησαν, ἐν ἐρήμῳ ἐνήδρευσαν ἡμᾶς.
Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky, They flew on the mountains, In the wilderness they laid wait for us.
20
רוּחַ אַפֵּינוּ מְשִׁיחַ יְהוָה נִלְכַּד בִּשְׁחִיתוֹתָם אֲשֶׁר אָמַרְנוּ בְּצִלּוֹ נִחְיֶה בַגּוֹיִם
The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of HaShem, was taken in their pits; of whom we said: 'Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.'
ΡΗΧΣ. Πνεῦμα προσώπου ἡμῶν χριστὸς Κύριος συνελήφθη ἐν ταῖς διαφθοραῖς αὐτῶν, οὗ εἴπαμεν, ἐν τῇ σκιᾶ αὐτοῦ ζησόμεθα ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσι.
The breath of our nostrils, [our] anointed Lord, Was taken in their destructive snares, Of whom we said, In his shadow we shall live among the Gentiles.
21
שִׂישִׂי וְשִׂמְחִי בַּת־אֱדוֹם יושבתי יוֹשֶׁבֶת בְּאֶרֶץ עוּץ גַּם־עָלַיִךְ תַּעֲבָר־כּוֹס תִּשְׁכְּרִי וְתִתְעָרִי
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz: the cup shall pass over unto thee also; thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.
ΧΣΕΝ. Χαῖρε καὶ εὐφραίνου θύγατερ Ἰδουμαίας ἡ κατοικοῦσα ἐπὶ γῆς, καί γε ἐπὶ σὲ διελεύσεται τὸ ποτήριον Κυρίου, μεθυσθήσῃ καὶ ἀποχεεῖς.
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, That dwellest in the land: Yet the cup of the Lord shall pass through to thee: Thou shalt be drunken, and pour forth.
22
תַּם־עֲוֺנֵךְ בַּת־צִיּוֹן לֹא יוֹסִיף לְהַגְלוֹתֵךְ פָּקַד עֲוֺנֵךְ בַּת־אֱדוֹם גִּלָּה עַל־חַטֹּאתָיִךְ
The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion, He will no more carry thee away into captivity; He will punish thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom, He will uncover thy sins.
ΘΑΥ. Ἐξέλιπεν ἡ ἀνομία σου θύγατερ Σιὼν, οὐ προσθήσει τοῦ ἀποικίσαι σε· ἐπεσκέψατο ἀνομίας σου θύγατερ Ἐδὼμ, ἀπεκάλυψεν ἐπὶ τὰ ἀσεβήματά σου.
O daughter of Zion, thine iniquity has come to an end; He shall no more carry thee captive: He has visited thine iniquities, O daughter of Edom; He has discovered thy sins.

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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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