4Q108

4Q108 (or 4QCant^c) is a fragment containing portions of the Song of Songs in Hebrew. It is the third of three such scrolls found in Cave 4 at Qumran. These, and 6Q6 from Cave 6, comprise the total witness to the Song from the Dead Sea Scrolls, known so far.

Identification

It is evident that 4Q108 is not from the other two manuscripts of the Song found in the cave. The last two words of Song 3:7, g'bore Israel ("warriors of Israel") are already accounted for in 4Q106; and the letters of 4Q107 are formed by an observably different hand to 4Q108. The manner of composition (Wiktionary:ductus) of the letters aleph and shin differs between the manuscripts. Additionally, the lacuna in the second column of 4Q107 does not provide enough space to accommodate 4Q108.

Contents

4Q108 is a "tiny fragment"^[1] containing only ten letters from two lines — five letters each from verses seven and eight of chapter three. The five letters from verse seven are: lmh, the last three letters of the name Solomon; and šš (shesh), the six in the word sixty. The five letters from verse eight are a single word aḥuzi, the passive participle of the verb meaning grasp. So 4Q108 reads:

• [⁷Behold the seat of So]lomon six[ty warriors surrounding it, from the warriors of]
• [Israel, ⁸all of them] equipped [with sword ...]

Features

• The Masoretic Text spells the verb of verse seven with only four letters; 4Q108, however, contains a consonant (vav) representing one of the distinctive vowels (IPA: [u]) of the passive participle.
• The passive construction used here — aḥuzi ḥereb (grasped of sword) — is not unique to either the Song (see Ezekiel 43:6) or to Hebrew.^[2]

See also

• Biblical manuscript
• Tanakh at Qumran

References

External links

• Emanuel Tov. 'A Categorized List of All the "Biblical Texts" Found in the Judean Desert.' Dead Sea Discoveries 8 (2001): 67-84.

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