Isaiah 66 — Dead Sea Scrolls

No substantive variant. Stephen quotes this verse in his speech before martyrdom (Acts 7:49): 'Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me?' The scroll confirms the MT reading. The implicit critique of Temple-centrism — if heaven is God's throne, what house can contain Him? — is identical in both texts.

This verse does not reject the Temple outright but relativizes it. The question 'Where is the house that you would build for Me?' challenges any worship that confuses the container with the contained.

The scroll omits maqqefs. The contrast between cosmic grandeur (v. 1) and God's attention to the humble individual (v. 2) is preserved identically. The phrase 'trembles at My word' describes the posture that pleases God more than any sacrifice.

The scroll omits the maqqef. The shocking equation of legitimate sacrifice with murder (when performed by the wicked) is identical in both texts. This verse represents the most radical critique of sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible — not that sacrifice is wrong, but that sacrifice offered by those who practice abomination is itself an abomination.

The scroll uses plene spelling for ta'aluleyhem ('their afflictions/caprices'). The ironic divine response — 'since they chose what I did not delight in, I also will choose their punishments' — is identical in both texts.

No meaningful variant. The address to the faithful — those who tremble at God's word but are hated and cast out by their brothers — is identical in both texts.

The scroll reads yaledah (ילדה) without the mater lectionis aleph that appears in MT's yaladah. Both forms are valid third-feminine-singular perfect. The miraculous birth-before-labor imagery describes Zion's sudden, painless delivery — a reversal of the Genesis 3:16 curse. The suddenness of eschatological restoration is the point: before the labor pains begin, the child is already born.

No meaningful variant. The rhetorical questions — 'Who has heard such a thing? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth at once?' — express astonishment at the speed of Zion's restoration. Both texts agree.

No meaningful variant. The call to rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad with her is identical in both texts.

The scroll uses a slightly different spelling for tanchumeha ('her consolations'). The nursing imagery — sucking and being satisfied at the breast of Jerusalem's consolations — is identical in both texts.

The scroll uses plene spelling for noteh ('extending'). The image of peace flowing like a river and the glory of nations like an overflowing stream is identical in both texts.

No meaningful variant. God's self-comparison to a comforting mother is one of the Hebrew Bible's most tender images of the divine. Both texts preserve it identically.

No meaningful variant. The promise that 'your heart shall rejoice, your bones shall flourish like grass' and the contrast that 'the hand of the LORD shall be known to His servants, and He shall be indignant against His enemies' is identical in both texts.

The scroll spells ki as kia. The theophanic imagery of God coming in fire with chariots like the whirlwind to render anger in fury and rebuke with flames of fire is identical in both texts.

The scroll spells anokhi with plene waw and kol with waw. This verse is textually difficult in both traditions — the syntax is compressed. The universalist vision of gathering 'all nations and tongues' to see God's glory is identical in both texts and represents Third Isaiah's climactic statement of universal eschatology.

The scroll reads the same list of far-flung nations who will hear of God's glory: Tarshish, Pul/Put, Lud, Tubal, Javan, and the distant coastlands. The vision of survivors being sent as missionaries to nations that have never heard of God's fame is identical in both texts. This is one of the most explicitly universalist-missionary texts in the Hebrew Bible.

The scroll spells kol with waw in both instances. The vision of Gentile nations bringing Israelites back 'on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, and on dromedaries' to the holy mountain is identical. The stunning declaration that follows — God will take some of the returned exiles as 'priests and Levites' — pushes universalism further than almost any other OT text. Both traditions preserve this reading.

The scroll spells ki as kia. The second reference to 'new heavens and new earth' (cf. 65:17) is identical in both texts. Here the new creation serves as the guarantee of Israel's perpetual existence: 'as the new heavens and the new earth that I am making shall endure before Me, so shall your offspring and your name endure.' The scroll confirms this reading at the very end of the manuscript.

The scroll uses plene spelling for chodesh ('month/new moon'). The eschatological vision of universal worship — 'all flesh shall come to worship before Me' — is identical in both texts. Later synagogue practice reads this verse again after verse 24 as the haftarah ending, because verse 24 ends on a note of judgment. The scroll shows no awareness of this liturgical convention, which developed later.

The scroll uses plene spelling for poshim ('those rebelling'). This is the final verse of Isaiah — and the final text on the Great Isaiah Scroll. The jarring image of the righteous gazing on the undying worms and unquenched fire consuming the rebellious is identical in both texts. Jesus quotes this verse in Mark 9:48 ('where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched').

The scroll ends after this verse. The final column (LIV) shows the text running to completion without lacunae. There is no formal colophon, but scribal marks (including what appears to be a final line or spacing marker) indicate the scribe recognized this as the end of the book. The Great Isaiah Scroll — the oldest complete biblical manuscript ever discovered — ends exactly where the Masoretic tradition does, with the same words.

This convergence of the scroll and MT at both the beginning (Isaiah 1:1) and the end (66:24) of the book is powerful testimony to the stability of the Isaiah textual tradition across more than a millennium.