Textorah

Psalms 71

1
בְּךָ־יְהוָה חָסִיתִי אַל־אֵבוֹשָׁה לְעוֹלָם
In Thee, O HaShem, have I taken refuge; let me never be ashamed.
Τῷ Δαυὶδ υἱῶν Ἰωναδὰβ, καὶ τῶν πρώτων αἰχμαλωτισθέντων. Ἐπὶ σοὶ Κύριε ἤλπισα, μὴ καταισχυνθείην εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.
By David, [a Psalm sung by] the sons of Jonadab, and the first that were taken captive. O Lord, I have hoped in thee: let me never be put to shame.
2
בְּצִדְקָתְךָ תַּצִּילֵנִי וּתְפַלְּטֵנִי הַטֵּה־אֵלַי אָזְנְךָ וְהוֹשִׁיעֵנִי
Deliver me in Thy righteousness, and rescue me; incline Thine ear unto me, and save me.
Ἐν τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ σου ῥῦσαί με καὶ ἐξελοῦ με, κλῖνον πρὸς μὲ τὸ οὖς σου καὶ σῶσόν με.
In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me: Incline thine ear to me, and save me.
3
הֱיֵה לִי לְצוּר מָעוֹן לָבוֹא תָּמִיד צִוִּיתָ לְהוֹשִׁיעֵנִי כִּי־סַלְעִי וּמְצוּדָתִי אָתָּה
Be Thou to me a sheltering rock, whereunto I may continually resort, which Thou hast appointed to save me; for Thou art my rock and my fortress.
Γενοῦ μοι εἰς Θεὸν ὑπερασπιστὴν, καὶ εἰς τόπον ὀχυρὸν τοῦ σῶσαί με, ὅτι στερέωμά μου καὶ καταφυγή μου εἶ σύ.
Be to me a protecting God, And a stronghold to save me: For thou art my fortress and my refuge.
4
אֱ‍לֹהַי פַּלְּטֵנִי מִיַּד רָשָׁע מִכַּף מְעַוֵּל וְחוֹמֵץ
O my G-d, rescue me out of the hand of the wicked, out of the grasp of the unrighteous and ruthless man.
Ὁ Θεός μου ῥῦσαί με ἐκ χειρὸς ἁμαρτωλοῦ, ἐκ χειρὸς παρανομοῦντος καὶ ἀδικοῦντος.
Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the sinner, From the hand of the transgressor and unjust man.
5
כִּי־אַתָּה תִקְוָתִי אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה מִבְטַחִי מִנְּעוּרָי
For Thou art my hope; O L-rd GOD, my trust from my youth.
Ὅτι σὺ εἶ ἡ ὑπομονή μου Κύριε, Κύριε ἡ ἐλπίς μου ἐκ νεότητός μου·
For thou art my support, O Lord; O Lord, [thou art] my hope from my youth.
6
עָלֶיךָ נִסְמַכְתִּי מִבֶּטֶן מִמְּעֵי אִמִּי אַתָּה גוֹזִי בְּךָ תְהִלָּתִי תָמִיד
Upon Thee have I stayed myself from birth; Thou art he that took me out of my mother's womb; my praise is continually of Thee.
Ἐπὶ σὲ ἐπεστηρίχθην ἀπὸ γαστρὸς, ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου σύ μου εἶ σκεπαστής. ἐν σοὶ ἡ ὕμνησίς μου διαπαντός.
On thee have I been stayed from the womb: From the belly of my mother thou art my protector: Of thee is my praise continually.
7
כְּמוֹפֵת הָיִיתִי לְרַבִּים וְאַתָּה מַחֲסִי־עֹז
I am as a wonder unto many; but Thou art my strong refuge.
Ὡσεὶ τέρας ἐγενήθην τοῖς πολλοῖς, καὶ σὺ βοηθὸς κραταιός.
I am become as it were a wonder to many; But thou art [my] strong helper.
8
יִמָּלֵא פִי תְּהִלָּתֶךָ כָּל־הַיּוֹם תִּפְאַרְתֶּךָ
My mouth shall be filled with Thy praise, and with Thy glory all the day.
Πληρωθήτω τὸ στόμα μου αἰνέσεως, ὅπως ὑμνήσω τὴν δόξαν σου, ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν μεγαλοπρέπειάν σου.
Let my mouth be filled with praise, That I may hymn thy glory, [And] thy majesty all the day.
9
אַל־תַּשְׁלִיכֵנִי לְעֵת זִקְנָה כִּכְלוֹת כֹּחִי א͏ַל־תַּעַזְבֵנִי
Cast me not off in the time of old age; when my strength faileth, forsake me not.
Μὴ ἀποῤῥίψῃς με εἰς καιρὸν γήρους, ἐν τῷ ἐκλείπειν τὴν ἰσχύν μου μὴ ἐγκαταλίπῃς με.
Cast me not off at the time of old age; Forsake me not when my strength fails.
10
כִּי־אָמְרוּ אוֹיְבַי לִי וְשֹׁמְרֵי נַפְשִׁי נוֹעֲצוּ יַחְדָּו
For mine enemies speak concerning me, and they that watch for my soul take counsel together,
Ὅτι εἶπαν οἱ ἐχθροί μου ἐμοὶ, καὶ οἱ φυλάσσοντες τὴν ψυχήν μου ἐβουλεύσαντο ἐπιτοαυτὸ,
For mine enemies have spoken against me; And they that lay wait for my soul have taken counsel together,
11
לֵאמֹר אֱלֹהִים עֲזָבוֹ רִדְפוּ וְתִפְשׂוּהוּ כִּי־אֵין מַצִּיל
Saying: 'G-d hath forsaken him; pursue and take him; for there is none to deliver.'
λέγοντες, ὁ Θεὸς ἐγκατέλιπεν αὐτὸν, καταδιώξατε καὶ καταλάβετε αὐτὸν, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ ῥυόμενος.
Saying, God has forsaken him: Persecute ye and take him; For there is none to deliver [him].
12
אֱלֹהִים אַל־תִּרְחַק מִמֶּנִּי אֱלֹהַי לְעֶזְרָתִי חישה חוּשָׁה
O G-d, be not far from me; O my G-d, make haste to help me.
Ὁ Θεὸς μὴ μακρύνῃς ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ,
O God, go not far from me, O my God, draw nigh to my help.
13
יֵבֹשׁוּ יִכְלוּ שֹׂטְנֵי נַפְשִׁי יַעֲטוּ חֶרְפָּה וּכְלִמָּה מְבַקְשֵׁי רָעָתִי
Let them be ashamed and consumed that are adversaries to my soul; let them be covered with reproach and confusion that seek my hurt.
ὁ Θεός μου εἰς τὴν βοήθειάν μου πρόσχες. Αἰσχυνθήτωσαν καὶ ἐκλιπέτωσαν οἱ ἐνδιαβάλλοντες τὴν ψυχήν μου, περιβαλλέσθωσαν αἰσχύνην καὶ ἐντροπὴν οἱ ζητοῦντες τὰ κακά μοι.
Let those that plot against my soul be ashamed and utterly fail: Let those that seek my hurt be clothed with shame and dishonor.
14
וַאֲנִי תָּמִיד אֲיַחֵל וְהוֹסַפְתִּי עַל־כָּל־תְּהִלָּתֶךָ
But as for me, I will hope continually, and will praise Thee yet more and more.
Ἐγὼ δὲ διαπαντὸς ἐλπιῶ, καὶ προσθήσω ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν αἴνεσίν σου.
But I will hope continually, And will praise thee more and more.
15
פִּי יְסַפֵּר צִדְקָתֶךָ כָּל־הַיּוֹם תְּשׁוּעָתֶךָ כִּי לֹא יָדַעְתִּי סְפֹרוֹת
My mouth shall tell of Thy righteousness, and of Thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof.
Τὸ στόμα μου ἐξαγγελεῖ τὴν δικαιοσύνην σου, ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν σωτηρίαν σου· ὅτι οὐκ ἔγνων πραγματείας.
My mouth shall declare thy righteousness openly, [And] thy salvation all the day; For I am not acquainted with the affairs [of men].
16
אָבוֹא בִּגְבֻרוֹת אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה אַזְכִּיר צִדְקָתְךָ לְבַדֶּךָ
I will come with Thy mighty acts, O L-rd GOD; I will make mention of Thy righteousness, even of Thine only.
Εἰσελεύσομαι ἐν δυναστείᾳ Κυρίου, Κύριε μνησθήσομαι τῆς δικαιοσύνης σου μόνου.
I will go on in the might of the Lord: O Lord, I will make mention of thy righteousness only.
17
אֱ‍לֹהִים לִמַּדְתַּנִי מִנְּעוּרָי וְעַד־הֵנָּה אַגִּיד נִפְלְאוֹתֶיךָ
O G-d, Thou hast taught me from my youth; and until now do I declare Thy wondrous works.
Ἐδίδαξας με ὁ Θεὸς ἐκ νεότητός μου, καὶ μέχρι νῦν ἀπαγγελῶ τὰ θαυμάσιά σου,
O God, thou hast taught me from my youth, And until now will I declare thy wonders;
18
וְגַם עַד־זִקְנָה וְשֵׂיבָה אֱלֹהִים אַל־תַּעַזְבֵנִי עַד־אַגִּיד זְרוֹעֲךָ לְדוֹר לְכָל־יָבוֹא גְּבוּרָתֶךָ
And even unto old age and hoary hairs, O G-d, forsake me not; until I have declared Thy strength unto the next generation, Thy might to every one that is to come.
καὶ ἕως γήρους καὶ πρεσβείου· ὁ Θεὸς μὴ ἐγκαταλίπῃς με, ἕως ἂν ἀπαγγείλω τὸν βραχίονά σου πάσῃ τῇ γενεᾷ τῇ ἐρχομένῃ· Τὴν δυναστείαν σου,
Even until I am old and advanced in years. O God, forsake me not; Until I shall have declared thine arm to all the generation that is to come:
19
וְצִדְקָתְךָ אֱלֹהִים עַד־מָרוֹם אֲשֶׁר־עָשִׂיתָ גְדֹלוֹת אֱלֹהִים מִי כָמוֹךָ
Thy righteousness also, O G-d, which reacheth unto high heaven; Thou who hast done great things, O G-d, who is like unto Thee?
καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην σου ὁ Θεὸς ἕως ὑψίστων, ἃ ἐποίησας μεγαλεῖα· ὁ Θεὸς τίς ὅμοιός σοι;
Even thy power and thy righteousness, O God, up to the highest [heavens, even] the mighty works which thou hast done: O God, who is like to thee?
20
אֲשֶׁר הראיתנו הִרְאִיתַנִי צָרוֹת רַבּוֹת וְרָעוֹת תָּשׁוּב תחיינו תְּחַיֵּינִי וּמִתְּהֹמוֹת הָאָרֶץ תָּשׁוּב תַּעֲלֵנִי
Thou, who hast made me to see many and sore troubles, wilt quicken me again, and bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
Ὅσας ἔδειξάς μοι θλίψεις πολλὰς καὶ κακάς; καὶ ἐπιστρέψας ἐζωοποίησάς με, καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἀβύσσων τῆς γῆς πάλιν ἀνήγαγές με.
What afflictions many and sore hast thou shown me! Yet thou didst turn and quicken me, And broughtest me again from the depths of the earth.
21
תֶּרֶב גְּדֻלָּתִי וְתִסֹּב תְּנַחֲמֵנִי
Thou wilt increase my greatness, and turn and comfort me.
Ἐπλεόνασας τὴν δικαιοσύνην σου, καὶ ἐπιστρέψας παρεκάλεσάς με, καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἀβύσσων τῆς γῆς πάλιν ἀνήγαγές με.
Thou didst multiply thy righteousness, And didst turn and comfort me, And broughtest me again out of the depths of the earth.
22
גַּם־אֲנִי אוֹדְךָ בִכְלִי־נֶבֶל אֲמִתְּךָ אֱלֹהָי אֲזַמְּרָה לְךָ בְכִנּוֹר קְדוֹשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל
I also will give thanks unto Thee with the psaltery, even unto Thy truth, O my G-d; I will sing praises unto Thee with the harp, O Thou Holy One of Israel.
Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ ἐξομολογήσομαί σοι ἐν σκεύει ψαλμοῦ τὴν ἀλήθειάν σου ὁ Θεὸς, ψαλῶ σοι ἐν κιθάρᾳ ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.
I will also therefore give thanks to thee, O God, [because of] thy truth, on an instrument of psalmody: I will sing psalms to thee on the harp, O Holy One of Israel.
23
תְּרַנֵּנָּה שְׂפָתַי כִּי אֲזַמְּרָה־לָּךְ וְנַפְשִׁי אֲשֶׁר פָּדִיתָ
My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing praises unto Thee; and my soul, which Thou hast redeemed.
Ἀγαλλιάσονται τὰ χείλη μου ὅταν ψάλω σοι, καὶ ἡ ψυχή μου ἣν ἐλυτρώσω.
My lips shall rejoice when I sing to thee; And my soul, which thou hast redeemed.
24
גַּם־לְשׁוֹנִי כָּל־הַיּוֹם תֶּהְגֶּה צִדְקָתֶךָ כִּי־בֹשׁוּ כִי־חָפְרוּ מְבַקְשֵׁי רָעָתִי
My tongue also shall tell of Thy righteousness all the day; for they are ashamed, for they are abashed, that seek my hurt.
Ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἡ γλῶσσά μου ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν μελετήσει τὴν δικαιοσύνην σου, ὅταν αἰσχυνθῶσι καὶ ἐντραπῶσιν οἱ ζητοῦντες τὰ κακά μοι.
Moreover also my tongue shall dwell all the day upon thy righteousness; When they shall be ashamed and confounded that seek my hurt.

How it works

A parallel reader for the Hebrew Bible and its oldest witnesses: the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, each with an English translation where one is available.

Reading a chapter

Choose a book and chapter at the top, or type a reference into Go to (Isa 53:11, 1 Sam 3, sam 3:4, ii kgs 2, ben sira 51). Book names can be abbreviated; a name shared by numbered books (sam, kings, chr, macc) opens the first of them unless you add the number. The arrow keys move between chapters, and the address bar keeps a link to the verse you clicked, so you can bookmark or share a place.

Each row is one verse. Rows follow the Masoretic verse numbering, so the Hebrew, JPS and Samaritan columns line up exactly. The Septuagint is numbered differently in many places (Psalms, Jeremiah, Exodus 35–40, parts of Kings, Proverbs, Daniel, and dozens of chapter boundaries). Its verses are placed against their Masoretic counterparts, and a small tag such as 50:3 shows the Septuagint's own number when it differs. Greek verses that have no Masoretic counterpart (for example the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3) appear in reading order as separate rows marked LXX.

Columns

The chips at the top switch columns on and off. Drag a chip (or a column heading) to reorder; with a chip focused, the ← → keys move it. Your choice is remembered. The Samaritan columns appear only in Genesis–Deuteronomy; the scrolls column appears wherever a manuscript survives, including Ben Sira. Columns marked † are licensed for non-commercial use only.

Words: lexicon and concordance

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

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

Variants

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

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

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

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

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

Rabbinic citations

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

How the Septuagint is aligned

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

The Greek word data

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

About the texts

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

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

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

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

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

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

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

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

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

Samaritan Pentateuch †

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

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

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

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

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

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

Ben Sira

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

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

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

Psalm 151

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

Tobit

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

1 Enoch

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

Jubilees

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

Lexicon and concordance data

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

† Licensed for non-commercial use only. Full credits and licences: Credits and licences.