The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

162 A NEW EDITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
4QKgs
…[to] be ruler over [my] people…
1 Kings 8:16
[y]m( l( dygn twyh[l]
2 Chr 6:5–6
ym( l( dygn twyhl #y)b ytrxb )lw M# ym# twyhl
M# ym# twyhl Ml#wryb rxb)w l)r#y
…so that my name may be there, and I have not chosen anyone to be ruler
over my people Israel. But I have chosen Jerusalem so that that my name may be there
LXX
ei]nai to\ o1noma/ mou e0kei= kai\ e0celeca/mhn e0n 0Ierousalh\m ei]nai to\
o1noma/ mou e0kei=
(≈M# ym# twyhl Ml#wryb rtb)w M# ym# twyhl)
…so that my name may be there. But I have chosen Jerusalem so that my
name may be there
MT
…so that my name may be there
M# ym# twyhl
A fragment of 4QKings [= 4Q54] partially preserves a reading that has
been lost in MT and LXX, but that has been preserved intact in 2
Chronicles. The Chronicles passage reads as follows (with the material
lacking in MT italicized):
From the day that I brought my people out of the land of Egypt, I have not
chosen a city out of all the tribes of Israel to build a house so that my name
may be there, and I have not chosen anyone to be ruler over my people Israel. But I
have chosen Jerusalem so that my name may be there, and I have chosen David to
be over my people Israel. (2 Chr 6:5–6)
As scholars have noticed, MT has apparently suffered a haplography between
the identical phrases, “so that my name may be there” (M# ym# twyhl). 35 The
4QKings fragment preserves part of the sequence lacking in MT, indicating
that Chronicles was accurately quoting a Hebrew text of Kings. Interestingly,
enemies” (“Acts of Nahash,” 131). However, such a punishment—the blinding of
rebels, such as the Philistines’ blinding of Samson—is explicable on the (Ammonite)
view that the Reubenites and Gadites were “ancestral enemies … who occupied
Ammonite soil” (Cross, “Ammonite Oppression,” 157). Hence, Rofé’s chief historicalliterary
objection to the primacy of the longer text does not carry weight.
35. See Steven L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM
33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 89; Tov, Textual Criticism, 238–39; and the comments
in Trebolle Barrera’s edition, “4QKgs,” in Qumran Cave 4.IX: Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, Kings (ed. E. Ulrich et al.; DJD 14; Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 177.