Textorah

Proverbs 12

1
אֹהֵב מוּסָר אֹהֵב דָּעַת וְשֹׂנֵא תוֹכַחַת בָּעַר
Whoso loveth knowledge loveth correction; but he that is brutish hateth reproof.
Ὁ ἀγαπῶν παιδείαν, ἀγαπᾷ αἴσθησιν· ὁ δὲ μισῶν ἐλέγχους, ἄφρων.
He that loves instruction loves sense, But he that hates reproofs is a fool.
2
טוֹב יָפִיק רָצוֹן מֵיְהוָה וְאִישׁ מְזִמּוֹת יַרְשִׁיעַ
A good man shall obtain favour of HaShem; but a man of wicked devices will He condemn.
Κρείσσων ὁ εὑρὼν χάριν παρὰ Κυρίῳ, ἀνὴρ δὲ παράνομος παρασιωπηθήσεται.
He that has found favor with the Lord [is made] better; But a transgressor shall be passed over in silence.
3
לֹא־יִכּוֹן אָדָם בְּרֶשַׁע וְשֹׁרֶשׁ צַדִּיקִים בַּל־יִמּוֹט
A man shall not be established by wickedness; but the root of the righteous shall never be moved.
Οὐ κατορθώσει ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἀνόμου, αἱ δὲ ῥίζαι τῶν δικαίων οὐκ ἐξαρθήσονται.
A man shall not prosper by wickedness; But the roots of the righteous shall not be taken up.
4
אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל עֲטֶרֶת בַּעְלָהּ וּכְרָקָב בְּעַצְמוֹתָיו מְבִישָׁה
A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; but she that doeth shamefully is as rottenness in his bones.
Γυνὴ ἀνδρεία στέφανος τῷ ἀνδρὶ αὐτῆς· ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν ξύλῳ σκώληξ, οὕτως ἄνδρα ἀπόλλυσι γυνὴ κακοποιός.
A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; But as a worm in wood, so a bad woman destroys her husband.
5
מַחְשְׁבוֹת צַדִּיקִים מִשְׁפָּט תַּחְבֻּלוֹת רְשָׁעִים מִרְמָה
The thoughts of the righteous are right; but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.
Λογισμοὶ δικαίων κρίματα, κυβερνῶσι δὲ ἀσεβεῖς δόλους.
The thoughts of the righteous [are true] judgments; But ungodly men devise deceits.
6
דִּבְרֵי רְשָׁעִים אֱרָב־דָּם וּפִי יְשָׁרִים יַצִּילֵם
The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood; but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.
Λόγοι ἀσεβῶν δόλιοι, στόμα δὲ ὀρθῶν ῥύσεται αὐτούς.
The words of ungodly men are crafty; But the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.
7
הָפוֹךְ רְשָׁעִים וְאֵינָם וּבֵית צַדִּיקִים יַעֲמֹד
The wicked are overthrown, and are not; but the house of the righteous shall stand.
Οὗ ἐὰν στραφῇ ὁ ἀσεβὴς, ἀφανίζεται, οἶκοι δὲ δικαίων παραμένουσι·
When the ungodly is overthrown, he vanishes away; But the houses of the just remain.
8
לְפִי־שִׂכְלוֹ יְהֻלַּל־אִישׁ וְנַעֲוֵה־לֵב יִהְיֶה לָבוּז
A man shall be commended according to his intelligence; but he that is of a distorted understanding shall be despised.
Στόμα συνετοῦ ἐγκωμιάζεται ὑπὸ ἀνδρὸς, νωθροκάρδιος δὲ μυκτηρίζεται.
The mouth of an understanding [man] is praised by a man; But he that is dull of heart is had in derision.
9
טוֹב נִקְלֶה וְעֶבֶד לוֹ מִמְּתַכַּבֵּד וַחֲסַר־לָחֶם
Better is he that is lightly esteemed, and hath a servant, than he that playeth the man of rank, and lacketh bread.
Κρείσσων ἀνὴρ ἐν ἀτιμίᾳ δουλεύων ἑαυτῷ, ἢ τιμὴν ἑαυτῷ περιτιθεὶς καὶ προσδεόμενος ἄρτου.
Better is a man in dishonor serving himself, Than one honoring himself and wanting bread.
10
יוֹדֵעַ צַדִּיק נֶפֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּוֹ וְרַחֲמֵי רְשָׁעִים אַכְזָרִי
A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
Δίκαιος οἰκτείρει ψυχὰς κτηνῶν αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ σπλάγχνα τῶν ἀσεβῶν ἀνελεήμονα.
A righteous man has pity for the lives of his cattle; But the bowels of the ungodly are unmerciful.
11
עֹבֵד אַדְמָתוֹ יִשְׂבַּע־לָחֶם וּמְרַדֵּף רֵיקִים חֲסַר־לֵב
He that tilleth his ground shall have plenty of bread; but he that followeth after vain things is void of understanding.
Ὁ ἐργαζόμενος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γῆν, ἐμπλησθήσεται ἄρτων, οἱ δὲ διώκοντες μάταια, ἐνδεεῖς φρενῶν· 11aὅς ἐστιν ἡδὺς ἐν οἴνων διατριβαῖς, ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ ὀχυρώμασι καταλείψει ἀτιμίαν.
He that tills his own land shall be satisfied with bread; But they that pursue vanities are void of understanding.
12
חָמַד רָשָׁע מְצוֹד רָעִים וְשֹׁרֶשׁ צַדִּיקִים יִתֵּן
The wicked desireth the prey of evil men; but the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit.
Ἐπιθυμίαι ἀσεβῶν κακαὶ, αἱ δὲ ῥίζαι τῶν εὐσεβῶν ἐν ὀχυρώμασι.
The desires of the ungodly are evil; But the roots of the godly are firmly set.
13
בְּפֶשַׁע שְׂפָתַיִם מוֹקֵשׁ רָע וַיֵּצֵא מִצָּרָה צַדִּיק
In the transgression of the lips is a snare to the evil man; but the righteous cometh out of trouble.
Διʼ ἁμαρτίαν χειλέων ἐμπίπτει εἰς παγίδας ἁμαρτωλὸς, ἐκφεύγει δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν δίκαιος· 13aὁ βλέπων λεῖα ἐλεηθήσεται, ὁ δὲ συναντῶν ἐν πύλαις ἐκθλίψει ψυχάς.
For the sin of [his] lips a sinner falls into snares; But a righteous man escapes from them.
14
מִפְּרִי פִי־אִישׁ יִשְׂבַּע־טוֹב וּגְמוּל יְדֵי־אָדָם ישוב יָשִׁיב לוֹ
A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth, and the doings of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him.
Ἀπὸ καρπῶν στόματος ψυχὴ ἀνδρὸς πλησθήσεται ἀγαθῶν, ἀνταπόδομα δὲ χειλέων αὐτοῦ δοθήσεται αὐτῷ.
The soul of a man shall be filled with good from the fruits of his mouth; And the recompense of his lips shall be given to him.
15
דֶּרֶךְ אֱוִיל יָשָׁר בְּעֵינָיו וְשֹׁמֵעַ לְעֵצָה חָכָם
The way of a fool is straight in his own eyes; but he that is wise hearkeneth unto counsel.
Ὁδοὶ ἀφρόνων ὀρθαὶ ἐνώπιον αὐτῶν, εἰσακούει δὲ συμβουλίας σοφός.
The ways of fools are right in their own eyes; But a wise man hearkens to counsels.
16
אֱוִיל בַּיּוֹם יִוָּדַע כַּעְסוֹ וְכֹסֶה קָלוֹן עָרוּם
A fool's vexation is presently known; but a prudent man concealeth shame.
Ἄφρων αὐθημερὸν ἐξαγγέλλει ὀργὴν αὐτοῦ, κρύπτει δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀτιμίαν ἀνὴρ πανοῦργος.
A fool declares his wrath the same day; But a prudent man hides his own disgrace.
17
יָפִיחַ אֱמוּנָה יַגִּיד צֶדֶק וְעֵד שְׁקָרִים מִרְמָה
He that breatheth forth truth uttereth righteousness; but a false witness deceit.
Ἐπιδεικνυμένην πίστιν ἀπαγγέλλει δίκαιος, ὁ δὲ μάρτυς τῶν ἀδίκων δόλιος.
A righteous man declares the open truth; But an unjust witness is deceitful.
18
יֵשׁ בּוֹטֶה כְּמַדְקְרוֹת חָרֶב וּלְשׁוֹן חֲכָמִים מַרְפֵּא
There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword; but the tongue of the wise is health.
Εἰσὶν οἳ λέγοντες τιτρώσκουσι, μάχαιραι· γλῶσσαι δὲ σοφῶν ἰῶνται.
Some wound as they speak, [like] swords; But the tongues of the wise heal.
19
שְׂפַת־אֱמֶת תִּכּוֹן לָעַד וְעַד־אַרְגִּיעָה לְשׁוֹן שָׁקֶר
The lip of truth shall be established for ever; but a lying tongue is but for a moment.
Χείλη ἀληθινὰ κατορθοῖ μαρτυρίαν, μάρτυς δὲ ταχὺς γλῶσσαν ἔχει ἄδικον.
True lips establish testimony; But a hasty witness has an unjust tongue.
20
מִרְמָה בְּלֶב־חֹרְשֵׁי רָע וּלְיֹעֲצֵי שָׁלוֹם שִׂמְחָה
Deceit is in the heart of them that devise evil; but to the counsellors of peace is joy.
Δόλος ἐν καρδίᾳ τεκταινομένου κακὰ, οἱ δὲ βουλόμενοι εἰρήνην εὐφρανθήσονται.
[There is] deceit in the heart of him that imagines evil; But they that love peace shall rejoice.
21
לֹא־יְאֻנֶּה לַצַּדִּיק כָּל־אָוֶן וּרְשָׁעִים מָלְאוּ רָע
There shall no mischief befall the righteous; but the wicked are filled with evil.
Οὐκ ἀρέσει τῷ δικαίῳ οὐδὲν ἄδικον, οἱ δὲ ἀσεβεῖς πλησθήσονται κακῶν.
No injustice will please a just man; But the ungodly will be filled with mischief.
22
תּוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה שִׂפְתֵי־שָׁקֶר וְעֹשֵׂי אֱמוּנָה רְצוֹנוֹ
Lying lips are an abomination to HaShem; but they that deal truly are His delight.
Βδέλυγμα Κυρίῳ χείλη ψευδῆ, ὁ δὲ ποιῶν πίστεις δεκτὸς παρʼ αὐτῷ.
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord; But he that deals faithfully is accepted with him.
23
אָדָם עָרוּם כֹּסֶה דָּעַת וְלֵב כְּסִילִים יִקְרָא אִוֶּלֶת
A prudent man concealeth knowledge; but the heart of fools proclaimeth foolishness.
Ἀνὴρ συνετὸς θρόνος αἰσθήσεως, καρδία δὲ ἀφρόνων συναντήσεται ἀραῖς.
An understanding man is a throne of wisdom; But the heart of fools shall meet with curses.
24
יַד־חָרוּצִים תִּמְשׁוֹל ורְמִיָּה תִּהְיֶה לָמַס
The hand of the diligent shall bear rule; but the slothful shall be under tribute.
Χεὶρ ἐκλεκτῶν κρατήσει εὐχερῶς, δόλιοι δὲ ἔσονται ἐν προνομῇ.
The hand of chosen men shall easily obtain rule; But the deceitful shall be for a prey.
25
דְּאָגָה בְלֶב־אִישׁ יַשְׁחֶנָּה וְדָבָר טוֹב יְשַׂמְּחֶנָּה
Care in the heart of a man boweth it down; but a good word maketh it glad.
Φοβερὸς λόγος καρδίαν ταράσσει ἀνδρὸς δικαίου, ἀγγελία δὲ ἀγαθὴ εὐφραίνει αὐτόν.
A terrible word troubles the heart of a righteous man; But a good message rejoices him.
26
יָתֵר מֵרֵעֵהוּ צַדִּיק וְדֶרֶךְ רְשָׁעִים תַּתְעֵם
The righteous is guided by his friend; but the way of the wicked leadeth them astray.
Ἐπιγνώμων δίκαιος ἑαυτοῦ φίλος ἔσται, ἁμαρτάνοντας δὲ καταδιώξεται κακὰ, ἡ δὲ ὁδὸς τῶν ἀσεβῶν πλανήσει αὐτούς.
A just arbitrator shall be his own friend; But mischief shall pursue sinners; And the way of ungodly men shall lead them astray.
27
לֹא־יַחֲרֹךְ רְמִיָּה צֵידוֹ וְהוֹן־אָדָם יָקָר חָרוּץ
The slothful man shall not hunt his prey; but the precious substance of men is to be diligent.
Οὐκ ἐπιτεύξεται δόλιος θήρας, κτῆμα δὲ τίμιον ἀνὴρ καθαρός.
A deceitful man shall catch no game; But a blameless man is a precious possession.
28
בְּאֹרַח־צְדָקָה חַיִּים וְדֶרֶךְ נְתִיבָה אַל־מָוֶת
In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death.
Ἐν ὁδοῖς δικαιοσύνης ζωὴ, ὁδοὶ δὲ μνησικάκων εἰς θάνατον.
In the ways of righteousness is life; But the ways of those that remember injuries [lead] to death.

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.

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