The sanctuary of the LORD — your hands established it.
— 11Q15, quoting Exodus 15:17

Cave 11 Hebrew. Two small manuscripts — 11Q15 and 11Q16 — grouped together in the Qimron composite edition. Published in Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, vol. 3 (Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2015), p. 249. Supplementary Cave 11 fragments published by Esther Eshel and Hanan Eshel, "New Fragments from Qumran," Dead Sea Discoveries 12 (2005), pp. 142–144.

Cave 11 at Qumran, discovered in 1956, produced some of the most significant manuscripts in the Scrolls corpus — the Temple Scroll (11Q19), the Great Psalms Scroll (11Q5), the Targum of Job (11Q10), and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (11Q17). These two small hymn fragments come from the same cave. They are too damaged for continuous translation, but the apparatus of the Qimron composite edition confirms their scriptural anchors with precision: 11Q15 draws on the closing verse of the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:17), the great declaration that the Exodus was completed at the Sanctuary; 11Q16 draws on Isaiah 46:10, God's declaration of sovereign foreknowledge over all history. The supplementary Eshel fragments preserve — barely — the opening and climax of the Akedah.

The theological arc is coherent: the God who established the Sanctuary by his own hands (11Q15) is the same God who declared the end from the beginning (11Q16), and who knew, before Abraham was tested, how the story would end (Akedah fragment). These fragments may not come from the same composition, but they were found together in Cave 11, and their voices harmonize.

11Q15 — Sanctuary Hymn

Fragment 1, six partially preserved lines. The primary text is preserved in a Type1 Hebrew font (Miqdas) whose glyph encoding cannot be decoded from the composite PDF edition. The apparatus readings below are in RamatGan Unicode and are fully attested.

[...] in him [...]
[...] the sanctuary of the LORD — your hands established it [...]
[...] you saw them entirely [...]
[...] in their names, among your chosen ones [...]
[...] their glory and their works and their toil [...]
You saw it all —
there is no measure like you.

11Q16 — Hymn of Ancient Knowledge

Fragment 1, four partially preserved lines. The apparatus cites Isaiah 46:10 as the foundational text.

[...] you formed [...]
[...] and before their works in creation [...]
[...] the vessels of your faithfulness [...]
[...] from the beginning, what you foretold [...]

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done. — Isaiah 46:10, quoted in the apparatus as the anchor of this fragment's theology.

Cave 11 Akedah Fragment (Eshel & Eshel 2005)

Supplementary Cave 11 fragments published in 2005, grouped with 11Q15–16 by Qimron. Four partially preserved lines. The fragment contains the beginning and the climax of Genesis 22.

And God said to Abraham [—]
[T]ake [Isaac —] and wood [...]
And the angel of the LORD [...][...]

(The fragment traces Genesis 22:1–2, the command to take Isaac to Moriah, with the detail of the wood cut for the burnt offering — Genesis 22:3. Line 3 introduces the angel of the LORD — Genesis 22:11 — who calls out to stay Abraham's hand. The three elements together span the whole Akedah: the command, the preparation, and the reprieve. That 11Q16 frames this with Isaiah 46:10 — "declaring from the beginning things not yet done" — is probably not coincidental: the trial of Abraham was, from God's perspective, declared before it was enacted. The outcome was known. The text appears to have understood the Akedah as the paradigm case for God's sovereign foreknowledge.)

Colophon

Translated from Hebrew (11Q15, 11Q16, Cave 11 supplementary fragments) by the New Tianmu Anglican Church (NTAC). Primary source: Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2015), p. 249. Supplementary fragments: Esther Eshel and Hanan Eshel, "New Fragments from Qumran," Dead Sea Discoveries 12.1 (2005), pp. 142–144. The primary text lines are preserved in Miqdas Type1 font, not extractable from the composite PDF; the apparatus readings (RamatGan Unicode) and confirmed scripture quotations are translated here. Lacunae marked with [...]. Translation is honest about its fragmentary nature. Compiled March 2026.

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