the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

310 DAILY AND FESTIVAL PRAYERS AT QUMRAN
of the time, understanding the liturgical day to begin with the evening
and the setting of the sun. 29
4Q504–4Q506
One key issue in this collection of thematic prayers for the individual
days of the week is the interpretation of the title for the entire group of
prayers in 4Q504, frag. 8, twrw)mh yrbd. The title may be literally
translated, “The Words of the Lights.” However, the Hebrew word yrbd
has a wide semantic range of possible meanings. The word in late-biblical
Hebrew may mean “matters” (1 Chr 27:1), daily “duties” or “liturgies”
(1 Chr 16:37; Ezra 3:4), “acts” (2 Chr 13:22) or “things” (Isa 42:16).
Thus, one could translate the title of the prayers as “The Liturgies of the
Lights” or “The Acts of the Lights.”
The precise meaning of the second noun in the title, “the Lights,” is
also problematic. The “lights” may signify the stars that sometimes symbolized
the heavenly angels. This association of stars and angels occurs
in another Qumran document, 4Q511, as well as another document, 1
En. 86:1, 3; 88:1. Thus, the title may signify the words of the stars or
angels, which the community uses as a model for the words of its own
prayers to God. However, a more likely context for understanding the
“words of lights” or “liturgies of lights” is the daily and monthly cycles
of heavenly “lights” which regulate chronological patterns of time for the
community, namely, the sun, the moon, and the stars. This pattern of
time was grounded in the biblical creation story of Genesis 1. Day 1
of creation involves the separation of the region of light and darkness, but
Day 4 (corresponding to Wednesday) is the high point in terms of the
creation of the “lights”: 30
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the
day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and days and
years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the
29. Baumgarten, ibid., 403–4. One exception to this may be the document 4Q408,
which refers to the morning before the evening. See Annette Steudel, “4Q408: A
Liturgy on Morning and Evening Prayer Preliminary Edition,” RevQ 16 (1994):
313–34. See also Esther Chazon, “When Did They Pray? Times for Prayer in the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature,” in For a Later Generation: The Transformation of
Tradition in Israel, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity (eds R. Argall, B. Bow, and R.
Werline; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 42–51.
30. On the importance of Wednesday as the day of light, see Annie Jaubert, La date
de la Cena (Paris: Cerf, 1957), 24, 26–27, 42–44.