Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

Fragment 3 (1)...(2)... the Lord, and all the people arose and sa[id ...] (3) the Lord of Hosts, and I also
... her people ...(4) And the Lord said to me, 'Son of [man...] God... (5) they shall sleep unti[1...] (6)
and from the land ... (7) he was rendered guilty...
10. Second Ezekiel (4Q385-389)
This text again recapitulates the themes we have been encountering in this Chapter. Beginning in
Fragment 1 with a more or less familiar vision of Ezekiel's Chariot, in succeeding fragments it moves
into more apocalyptic and eschatological themes. In Lines Off. of Fragment 3 Column 1, the wellknown
'bones' passage from Ezekiel is evoked with an obviously even greater emphasis on the idea of
resurrection encountered in several texts above and associated with these passages from Ezekiel in the
popular mind. For instance, the 'bones' passage from Ezekiel, also used the tell-tale words 'stand up' we
have encountered above, and was found buried under the synagogue floor at Masada, probably not
without reason.
Here the passage is actually tied in Lines 1-2 to the reward of those who have 'walked in the ways of
Piety and Righteousness', i.e. we are in the framework of eschatological judgement. The Hesed (Piety)
and Zedek (Righteousness) doctrines are absolutely fundamental to Qumran, as they are to Christianity
thereafter, and not surprisingly to the tradition of Jewish Kabbalah. They are also the twin
underpinnings of the 'opposition' movement in this period; as Josephus puts it, John taught
'Righteousness towards men and Piety towards God' (Ant. 18.116). Josephus ties these to 'Essene'
practice as well (War 2.128ff. and Ant. 15.375), and they are the basis of the two 'love' commandments
also reported in the Gospels of Jesus' teaching: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself -loving men -
and 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God'- loving God (Matt. 22:37ff., Mark 12:30f., Luke 10:27). Here,
too, Piety is defined as 'loving Your Name', showing these concepts to be absolutely consistent across
the breadth of Second Temple literature. Under them were subsumed all of one's duties, earthly and
heavenly.
At Qumran, as in early Christianity and James 2:8, 'loving one's neighbour as oneself' had an economic
dimension ending up in the condemnation of 'Riches' and the 'Poor' terminology. If you made
economic distinctions between men it was impossible to be perfectly Righteous. In this context, see
Column vi.20-21 of the Damascus Document, where the Righteousness Commandment is immediately
followed up by reference to 'the Meek and the Poor'.
The text now moves on to more historical allusions, including a mysterious one to 'a son of Belial'. The
language it uses in Fragment 3, Column 3 is typically that found in other Qumran texts. There is the
reference to 'Downtrodden' (Dal) and 'cup' imagery denoting, as we have seen above, that divine
vengeance so important to the Habakkuk Pesher and recapitulated also with reference to Babylon in
Rev. 14:8- 11. This 'cup' imagery in the Habakkuk Pesher is extremely important, because it has been
mistaken by many commentators as denoting drunkenness - the drunkenness of the Wicked Priest. But
this is totally inaccurate. It actually denotes, as here, that divine vengeance being visited on the Wicked
Priest for his destruction of the Righteous Teacher and his colleagues.
In Line 5 of Fragments 4-6, we have the language of 'rejecting' (ma'as) which one finds generally in
relation to the activity of the liar in the Habakkuk Pesher and other Qumran documents. In Line 15,