Isaiah 58 — Dead Sea Scrolls

No meaningful variant. The scroll preserves the same command: 'Cry out with full throat, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a shofar!' The consonantal text is identical.

The scroll uses the longer verbal suffix -un (ידרשון) where MT has the same form. Both preserve the ironic description of Israel as a people who 'seek Me daily and delight to know My ways' while failing to practice justice.

The scroll omits the maqqef and uses plene spelling for 'you find' (timtse'u). More notably, the scroll appears to read the second half of the verse with a slightly different word division affecting 'your laborers,' though the sense remains the same: on your fast day you exploit your workers.

Identical consonantal text. The rebuke that fasting accompanied by strife and wickedness will not 'make your voice heard on high' is preserved without variant.

The scroll uses plene spelling for chartzubot ('bonds'). The meaning is identical. This is the beginning of one of the Hebrew Bible's most powerful social justice declarations — the fast that God chooses: loosing bonds of wickedness, letting the oppressed go free, sharing bread with the hungry.

The scroll spells lo ('not') with waw and aleph (לוא), a characteristic Qumran orthographic practice. The commandment to not turn away from one's own kin is identical in meaning. The social ethics of true fasting — feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked — are firmly attested in the oldest manuscript.

The scroll uses plene spelling for arukah ('healing') with waw, and adds a fuller suffix form -kha. The promise is the same: 'Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.' The word arukah literally means 'new flesh growing over a wound' — a vivid metaphor for social restoration through justice.

This is a moderate variant because the fuller suffix form in the scroll makes the address slightly more emphatic.

No meaningful variant. The promise that 'you shall call and the LORD will answer; you shall cry and He will say, Here I am' is identical in both texts.

The scroll adds the fuller suffix -kha on 'your soul' (nafshekha vs. nafshekha). Meaning is identical. The conditional promise continues: if you pour out your soul for the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness.

The scroll spells raveh ('watered') with plene waw. The beautiful simile 'like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail' is identical in meaning. This metaphor for the person who practices true justice is one of Isaiah's most memorable images.

The scroll uses plene spelling for goder ('repairer'). The promise that the community practicing justice will be called 'repairer of the breach, restorer of streets to dwell in' is identical in both texts.

The scroll uses plene spelling for oneg ('delight'). The Sabbath commandment — calling the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable — is identical in meaning.