Manuscript Overview
Summary
Psalm 150 — the great Hallelujah doxology that closes the Hebrew Psalter. 11QPsᵃ preserves Ps 150 in its alternative ordering, but the scroll continues beyond Ps 150 with the apocryphal Hymn to the Creator, the David's Last Words pericope (2 Sam 23), the David's Compositions colophon, Pss 140, 134, and the Pss 151A and 151B Davidic-autobiographical compositions. In the scroll's structural logic, Ps 150 is not the end of the Psalter — David's autobiographical psalms (151A and 151B) close the collection.
Notable Variants
The scroll continues beyond Ps 150 with apocryphal compositions and a different closing structure than the MT. The David's Compositions colophon (11QPsᵃ col. XXVII) is a prose summary claiming that David composed 4,050 songs: 3,600 psalms; 364 daily psalms (one for each day of the solar year); 52 Sabbath songs; 30 festival songs; and 4 exorcism songs. The colophon credits David's compositions to divine inspiration and presents him as the author of essentially the entire Qumran psalmic literature. This is unique to 11QPsᵃ and represents the earliest comprehensive theory of Davidic psalmic authorship.
Manuscripts
11QPsᵃ (11Q5), 4QPsᵉ (4Q87)
Scroll Condition
11QPsᵃ preserves Ps 150 followed by the apocryphal closing material.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Halleluyah!
'Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!' tracks MT. In the MT, this is the Psalter's closing line. In 11QPsᵃ, the scroll continues with the Hymn to the Creator and the David autobiography (Pss 151A, 151B).
11QPsᵃ col. XXVI