"I have upheld you with my righteous right hand."
— 4Q454, apparatus-confirmed after Isaiah 41:10

4Q454, 4Q455 — Cave 4 Hebrew Fragments — Dead Sea Scrolls

Two small Cave 4 Hebrew manuscripts — 4Q454 and 4Q455 — preserve fragments of liturgical or sapiential composition. They share a vocabulary drawn from the Exodus tradition, the prophets, and wisdom literature, but their specific genre and setting within the Qumran community's liturgy cannot be determined from the surviving fragments. They are archived together here as closely adjacent Cave 4 texts of similar size and overlapping themes.

4Q454 draws on three distinct biblical traditions. The first is Isaiah 41:10 — I have upheld you with my righteous right hand — one of the great words of divine support from Deutero-Isaiah, the oracle of reassurance to the exiles in Babylon. At Qumran, this verse carried the weight of a community that understood itself to be in a second exile; the promise that God's righteous right hand upholds the fearful is quoted here in a liturgical context whose full shape is lost. The second tradition is Psalm 105:23 — the land of Ham — in a phrase related to the Exodus narrative review. The third is Exodus 16:32 — the bread which I fed you in the wilderness — the manna tradition, which at Qumran functioned as a type of the community's own sustenance in its desert retreat.

4Q455 draws on Proverbs 28:20 — a faithful man will abound with blessings — and Exodus 23:7 — keep far from a false matter — the fundamental ethical injunction of the covenant. This combination of wisdom aphorism (the faithful man abounds) with legal command (keep far from falseness) suggests sapiential instruction, or perhaps the kind of mixed-genre text that elsewhere at Qumran serves as a spiritual exhortation.

The Qimron PDF font encoding renders most body text opaque; the translation presents only apparatus-confirmed readings. Both manuscripts are highly fragmentary.

4Q454

Fragment 1

[...] [...]
[...] I have upheld you with my righteous right hand. [...]
[...] signs and wonders [...]
in the land of Ham — [...]
[...] the bread which I fed you in the wilderness. [...]
[...] [...]

(Isaiah 41:10; Psalm 105:23; Exodus 16:32. Additional lines too lacunose for continuous translation.)

4Q455

Fragment 1

[...] [...]
[...] A faithful man will abound with blessings. [...]
[...] Keep far from a false matter. [...]
[...] [...]

(Proverbs 28:20; Exodus 23:7. Single recoverable fragment.)

Colophon

Apocryphal Prayer Fragments (4Q454, 4Q455)
Qumran Cave 4. Hebrew. Approximately 1st century BCE.

Translated from the Hebrew by a DSS Tulku of the New Tianmu Anglican Church, March 2026. Transcription and apparatus: Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts (composite edition, Zenodo 2020, CC BY 4.0), pp. 890. The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; translation based entirely on apparatus-confirmed readings.

Line sources: 4Q454 — "אף תמכתיך בימין צדקי" (Isa 41:10, apparatus); "ומפתים בארץ חם" (Ps 105:23, apparatus); "הלחם אשר האכלתי אתכם במדבר" (Exod 16:32, apparatus). 4Q455 — "איש אמונות רב ברכות" (Prov 28:20, apparatus); "מדבר שקר תרחק" (Exod 23:7, apparatus).

Good Works Translation (NTAC + Claude). New Tianmu Anglican Church, Mar/2026.

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Source Text: שברי תפילה (4Q454–4Q455)

Hebrew, Qumran Cave 4. Apparatus-verified readings only, after Qimron composite edition (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), p. 890. The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; only apparatus-confirmed phrases are presented. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured.

4Q454 (Apparatus-Confirmed)

[...]
[...] אף תמכתיך בימין צדקי [...]
[...] ומפתים בארץ חם [...]
[...] הלחם אשר האכלתי אתכם במדבר [...]
[...]

Isaiah 41:10; Psalm 105:23; Exodus 16:32. Apparatus p. 890.

4Q455 (Apparatus-Confirmed)

[...]
[...] איש אמונות רב ברכות [...]
[...] מדבר שקר תרחק [...]
[...]

Proverbs 28:20; Exodus 23:7. Apparatus p. 890.

Source Colophon

Apparatus-verified Hebrew after Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts (Zenodo 2020, CC BY 4.0), p. 890. Biblical cross-references: Isa 41:10; Ps 105:23; Exod 16:32; Prov 28:20; Exod 23:7. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured beyond apparatus-confirmed readings.

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