historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

132 NOAH HAGHAM
1. Remember, O Lord, the season of Your mercies and the time of
return [...], and You have established it for us as a season of a fast,
an eter[nal] law, and You, know what is hidden and what is reveal [ed .. .
Y]ou have known our inclinations. . . [our rising u]p and lying down
(4Q508 2 2-6) 24
2. Have mercy on them for their fasting (4Q509 16 3) 25
(4Q510 1 4-8)
3. And I, the Instructor, proclaim the majesty of his beauty to frighten
and ter[rify] all the spirits of the destroying angels and the spirits of
the bastards, the demons, Lilith, the howlers and [the yelpers . . .] those
who strike suddenly to lead astray the spirit of understanding and to
appall their heart and their so[uls] in the age of the dominion of
wickedness. And the appointed times for the fasts of the Sons of Ligh [t]
in the guilt of the times of those smitten by iniquity not for eternal
destruction but for the age of fasts of sin. (4Q510 1 4-8) 26
4. ... lead him astray by fasts and not for [eternal] destruction (4Q511
5:\27 8
5. ... fasts till the end (4Q511 121) 28
23
The scribe wrote a final mem and then replaced it with heh and waw.
24
Baillet, DJD 7.178-79. Translation of all passages, with the exception of the
second, is mine.
25
Baillet, DJD 7.191. Translation by B. Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry,
trans. J. Chipman, STDJ 12 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 109.
26
Baillet, DJD 7.216. On the reconstruction see Nitzan, Qumran Prayer
and Religious Poetry, 240 n. 54.
27
Baillet, DJD 7.224.
28
Baillet, DJD 7.256. Besides these appearances, the editors reconstructed 4Q511
10 in accordance with 4Q510 1 4-8 as follows: