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Deuteronomy at Qumran / Chapter 26

Deuteronomy 26 — Dead Sea Scrolls

1 attestation entry • 0 variants • 4QDeut family

Manuscript Overview

Summary

Deuteronomy 26 closes the legal core with the first-fruits ritual (vv. 1–11), including the historical credo 'A wandering Aramean was my father' (vv. 5–10), and the third-year tithe declaration. 4QDeutᶠ and 4QDeutⁱ preserve vv. 1–5. The credo is one of the oldest cores of Israelite confession and is preserved at Qumran with no significant variation.

Notable Variants

No significant content variants. The 'wandering Aramean' (arami oved avi) credo tracks MT.

Manuscripts

4QDeutᶠ (4Q33), 4QDeutⁱ (4Q36)

Scroll Condition

Fragmentary; vv. 1-5 well preserved.

5
tracks MT

Then you will respond and say before the LORD your God: 'My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with only a few people, but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous nation.

'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt' tracks MT. This historical credo is the structural core of Israel's covenant theology and the basis of the Passover Haggadah.

4QDeutⁱ frag.