Textorah

Proverbs 21

1
פַּלְגֵי־מַיִם לֶב־מֶלֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהוָה עַל־כָּל־אֲשֶׁר יַחְפֹּץ יַטֶּנּוּ
The king's heart is in the hand of HaShem, as the watercourses: He turneth it whithersoever He will.
Ὥσπερ ὁρμὴ ὕδατος, οὕτως καρδία βασιλέως ἐν χειρὶ Θεοῦ, οὗ ἐὰν θέλων νεῦσαι ἐκεῖ ἔκλινεν αὐτήν.
As a rush of water, so is the king’s heart in God’s hand: He turns it whithersoever he may desire to point out.
2
כָּל־דֶּרֶךְ־אִישׁ יָשָׁר בְּעֵינָיו וְתֹכֵן לִבּוֹת יְהוָה
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but HaShem weigheth the hearts.
Πᾶς ἀνὴρ φαίνεται ἑαυτῷ δίκαιος, κατευθύνει δὲ καρδίας Κύριος.
Every man seems to himself righteous; But the Lord directs the hearts.
3
עֲשֹׂה צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט נִבְחָר לַיהוָה מִזָּבַח
To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to HaShem than sacrifice.
Ποιεῖν δίκαια καὶ ἀληθεύειν, ἀρεστὰ παρὰ Θεῷ μᾶλλον ἢ θυσιῶν αἷμα.
To do justly and to speak truth, Are more pleasing to God than the blood of sacrifices.
4
רוּם־עֵינַיִם וּרְחַב־לֵב נִר רְשָׁעִים חַטָּאת
A haughty look, and a proud heart--the tillage of the wicked is sin.
Μεγαλόφρων ἐν ὕβρει θρασυκάρδιος, λαμπτὴρ δὲ ἀσεβῶν ἁμαρτία.
A high-minded man is stouthearted in [his] pride; And the lamp of the wicked is sin.
5
מַחְשְׁבוֹת חָרוּץ אַךְ־לְמוֹתָר וְכָל־אָץ אַךְ־לְמַחְסוֹר
The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but every one that is hasty hasteth only to want.
6
פֹּעַל אוֹצָרוֹת בִּלְשׁוֹן שָׁקֶר הֶבֶל נִדָּף מְבַקְשֵׁי־מָוֶת
The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vapour driven to and fro; they that seek them seek death.
Ὁ ἐνεργῶν θησαυρίσματα γλώσσῃ ψευδεῖ, μάταια διώκει ἐπὶ παγίδας θανάτου.
He that gathers treasures with a lying tongue Pursues vanity [on] to the snares of death.
7
שֹׁד־רְשָׁעִים יְגוֹרֵם כִּי מֵאֲנוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט
The violence of the wicked shall drag them away; because they refuse to do justly.
Ὄλεθρος ἀσεβέσιν ἐπιξενωθήσεται, οὐ γὰρ βούλονται πράσσειν τὰ δίκαια.
Destruction shall lodge with the ungodly; For they refuse to do justly.
8
הֲפַכְפַּךְ דֶּרֶךְ אִישׁ וָזָר וְזַךְ יָשָׁר פָּעֳלוֹ
The way of man is froward and strange; but as for the pure, his work is right.
Πρὸς τοὺς σκολιοὺς σκολιὰς ὁδοὺς ἀποστέλλει ὁ Θεὸς, ἁγνὰ γὰρ καὶ ὀρθὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ.
To the froward God sends froward ways; For his works are pure and right.
9
טוֹב לָשֶׁבֶת עַל־פִּנַּת־גָּג מֵאֵשֶׁת מִדְיָנִים וּבֵית חָבֶר
It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than in a house in common with a contentious woman.
Κρεῖσσον οἰκεῖν ἐπὶ γωνίας ὑπαίθρου, ἢ ἐν κεκονιαμένοις μετὰ ἀδικίας καὶ ἐν οἴκῳ κοινῷ.
[It is] better to dwell in a corner on the housetop, Than in plastered [rooms] with unrighteousness, and in an open house.
10
נֶפֶשׁ רָשָׁע אִוְּתָה־רָע לֹא־יֻחַן בְּעֵינָיו רֵעֵהוּ
The soul of the wicked desireth evil; his neighbour findeth no favour in his eyes.
Ψυχὴ ἀσεβοῦς οὐκ ἐλεηθήσεται ὑπʼ οὐδενὸς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
The soul of the ungodly shall not be pitied by any man.
11
בַּעְנָשׁ־לֵץ יֶחְכַּם־פֶּתִי וּבְהַשְׂכִּיל לְחָכָם יִקַּח־דָּעַת
When the scorner is punished, the thoughtless is made wise; and when the wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge.
Ζημιουμένου ἀκολάστου πανουργότερος γίνεται ὁ ἄκακος, συνιῶν δὲ σοφὸς δέξεται γνῶσιν.
When an intemperate man is punished the simple becomes wiser: And a wise man understanding will receive knowledge.
12
מַשְׂכִּיל צַדִּיק לְבֵית רָשָׁע מְסַלֵּף רְשָׁעִים לָרָע
The Righteous One considereth the house of the wicked; overthrowing the wicked to their ruin.
Συνιεῖ δίκαιος καρδίας ἀσεβῶν, καὶ φαυλίζει ἀσεβεῖς ἐν κακοῖς.
A righteous man understands the hearts of the ungodly: And despises the ungodly for their wickedness.
13
אֹטֵם אָזְנוֹ מִזַּעֲקַת־דָּל גַּם־הוּא יִקְרָא וְלֹא יֵעָנֶה
Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be answered.
Ὃς φράσσει τὰ ὦτα αὐτοῦ τοῦ μὴ ἐπακοῦσαι ἀσθενοῦς, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπικαλέσεται καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ὁ εἰσακούων.
He that stops his ears from hearing the poor, Himself also shall cry, and there shall be none to hear [him].
14
מַתָּן בַּסֵּתֶר יִכְפֶּה־אָף וְשֹׁחַד בַּחֵק חֵמָה עַזָּה
A gift in secret pacifieth anger, and a present in the bosom strong wrath.
Δόσις λάθριος ἀνατρέπει ὀργάς, δώρων δὲ ὁ φειδόμενος θυμὸν ἐγείρει ἰσχυρόν.
A secret gift calms anger: But he that forbears to give stirs up strong wrath.
15
שִׂמְחָה לַצַּדִּיק עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וּמְחִתָּה לְפֹעֲלֵי אָוֶן
To do justly is joy to the righteous, but ruin to the workers of iniquity.
Εὐφροσύνη δικαίων ποιεῖν κρίμα, ὅσιος δὲ ἀκάθαρτος παρὰ κακούργοις.
[It is] the joy of the righteous to do judgment: But a holy [man] is abominable with evildoers.
16
אָדָם תּוֹעֶה מִדֶּרֶךְ הַשְׂכֵּל בִּקְהַל רְפָאִים יָנוּחַ
The man that strayeth out of the way of understanding shall rest in the congregation of the shades.
Ἀνὴρ πλανώμενος ἐξ ὁδοῦ δικαιοσύνης, ἐν συναγωγῇ γιγάντων ἀναπαύσεται.
A man that wanders out of the way of righteousness, Shall rest in the congregation of giants.
17
אִישׁ מַחְסוֹר אֹהֵב שִׂמְחָה אֹהֵב יַיִן־וָשֶׁמֶן לֹא יַעֲשִׁיר
He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.
Ἀνὴρ ἐνδεὴς ἀγαπᾷ εὐφροσύνην, φιλῶν οἶνον καὶ ἔλαιον εἰς πλοῦτον·
A poor man loves mirth, Loving wine and oil in abundance;
18
כֹּפֶר לַצַּדִּיק רָשָׁע וְתַחַת יְשָׁרִים בּוֹגֵד
The wicked is a ransom for the righteous; and the faithless cometh in the stead of the upright.
Περικάθαρμα δὲ δικαίου ἄνομος.
And a transgressor is the abomination of a righteous man.
19
טוֹב שֶׁבֶת בְּאֶרֶץ־מִדְבָּר מֵאֵשֶׁת מדונים מִדְיָנִים וָכָעַס
It is better to dwell in a desert land, than with a contentious and fretful woman.
Κρεῖσσον οἰκεῖν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, ἢ μετὰ γυναικὸς μαχίμου καὶ γλωσσώδους καὶ καὶ ὀργίλου.
[It is] better to dwell in a wilderness Than with a quarrelsome and talkative and passionate woman.
20
אוֹצָר נֶחְמָד וָשֶׁמֶן בִּנְוֵה חָכָם וּכְסִיל אָדָם יְבַלְּעֶנּוּ
There is desirable treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man swalloweth it up.
Θησαυρὸς ἐπιθυμητὸς ἀναπαύσεται ἐπὶ στόματος σοφοῦ, ἄφρονες δὲ ἄνδρες καταπίονται αὐτόν.
A desirable treasure will rest on the mouth of the wise; But foolish men will swallow it up.
21
רֹדֵף צְדָקָה וָחָסֶד יִמְצָא חַיִּים צְדָקָה וְכָבוֹד
He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, prosperity, and honour.
Ὁδὸς δικαιοσύνης καὶ ἐλεημοσύνης εὑρήσει ζωὴν καὶ δόξαν.
The way of righteousness and mercy will find life and glory.
22
עִיר גִּבֹּרִים עָלָה חָכָם וַיֹּרֶד עֹז מִבְטֶחָה
A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and bringeth down the stronghold wherein it trusteth.
Πόλεις ὀχυρὰς ἐπέβη σοφὸς, καὶ καθεῖλε τὸ ὀχύρωμα ἐφʼ ᾧ ἐπεποίθεισαν οἱ ἀσεβεῖς.
A wise man assaults strong cities, And demolishes the fortress in which the ungodly trusted.
23
שֹׁמֵר פִּיו וּלְשׁוֹנוֹ שֹׁמֵר מִצָּרוֹת נַפְשׁוֹ
Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.
Ὃς φυλάσσει τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν, διατηρεῖ ἐκ θλίψεως τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ.
He that keeps his mouth and his tongue Keeps his soul from trouble.
24
זֵד יָהִיר לֵץ שְׁמוֹ עוֹשֶׂה בְּעֶבְרַת זָדוֹן
A proud and haughty man, scorner is his name, even he that dealeth in overbearing pride.
Θρασὺς καὶ αὐθάδης καὶ ἀλαζὼν λοιμὸς καλεῖται, ὃς δὲ μνησικακεῖ παράνομος.
A bold and self-willed and insolent [man] is called a pest: And he that remembers injuries is a transgressor.
25
תַּאֲוַת עָצֵל תְּמִיתֶנּוּ כִּי־מֵאֲנוּ יָדָיו לַעֲשׂוֹת
The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.
Ἐπιθυμίαι ὀκνηρὸν ἀποκτείνουσιν, οὐ γὰρ προαιροῦνται αἱ χεῖρες αὐτοῦ ποιεῖν τι.
Desires kill the sluggard; For his hands do not choose to do anything.
26
כָּל־הַיּוֹם הִתְאַוָּה תַאֲוָה וְצַדִּיק יִתֵּן וְלֹא יַחְשֹׂךְ
There is that coveteth greedily all the day long; but the righteous giveth and spareth not.
Ἀσεβὴς ἐπιθυμεῖ ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν ἐπιθυμίας κακὰς, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐλεᾷ καὶ οἰκτείρει ἀφειδῶς.
An ungodly man entertains evil desires all the day: But the righteous is unsparingly merciful and compassionate.
27
זֶבַח רְשָׁעִים תּוֹעֵבָה אַף כִּי־בְזִמָּה יְבִיאֶנּוּ
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination; how much more, when he bringeth it with the proceeds of wickedness?
Θυσίαι ἀσεβῶν βδέλυγμα Κυρίῳ, καὶ γὰρ παρανόμως προσφέρουσιν αὐτάς.
The sacrifices of the ungodly are abomination to the Lord, For they offer them wickedly.
28
עֵד־כְּזָבִים יֹאבֵד וְאִישׁ שׁוֹמֵעַ לָנֶצַח יְדַבֵּר
A false witness shall perish; but the man that obeyeth shall speak unchallenged.
Μάρτυς ψευδὴς ἀπολεῖται, ἀνὴρ δὲ ὑπήκοος φυλασσόμενος λαλήσει.
A false witness shall perish; But an obedient man will speak cautiously.
29
הֵעֵז אִישׁ רָשָׁע בְּפָנָיו וְיָשָׁר הוּא יכין יָבִין דרכיו דַּרְכּוֹ
A wicked man hardeneth his face; but as for the upright, he looketh well to his way.
Ἀσεβὴς ἀνὴρ ἀναιδῶς ὑφίσταται προσώπῳ, ὁ δὲ εὐθὺς αὐτὸς συνιεῖ τὰς ὁδοὺς αὐτοῦ.
An ungodly man impudently withstands with his face; But the upright man himself understands his ways.
30
אֵין חָכְמָה וְאֵין תְּבוּנָה וְאֵין עֵצָה לְנֶגֶד יְהוָה
There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against HaShem.
Οὐκ ἔστι σοφία, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνδρεία, οὐκ ἔστι βουλὴ πρὸς τὸν ἀσεβῆ.
There is no wisdom, there is no courage, There is no counsel against the ungodly.
31
סוּס מוּכָן לְיוֹם מִלְחָמָה וְלַיהוָה הַתְּשׁוּעָה
The horse is prepared against the day of battle; but victory is of HaShem.
Ἵππος ἑτοιμάζεται εἰς ἡμέραν πολέμου, παρὰ δὲ Κυρίου ἡ βοήθεια.
A horse is prepared for the day of battle; But help is of the Lord.

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

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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