"Raised a branch and bore fruit, and gave abundantly."
— 4Q433a, apparatus-confirmed

4Q433a — Hodayot-like Text B — Dead Sea Scrolls, Cave 4

Three fragmentary parchment manuscripts from Cave 4 — 4Q433a being the primary text — classified by Eileen Schuller as Hodayot-like Text B. The text is a companion to the already-archived Hodayot-like Text A (4Q440). Like that text, it shares the Hodayot's first-person or communal voice, theological register, and characteristic movement between praise and lament. Unlike 4Q440, the surviving content of 4Q433a is more specifically organized around a judgment contrast: the righteous and the wicked, figured as two different trees, with radically different fates.

Fragment 1 preserves only thanksgiving and praise vocabulary — שירות (songs), תחבשות (praises) — too fragmentary for continuous translation. Fragment 2 delivers the body of the hymn. Its first column is an arboricultural meditation: the figure who raised a branch, bore fruit, and gave abundantly — the flourishing of the righteous, characterized by the standard Hodayot idiom of generativity. Then the register shifts to judgment. The second movement of Fragment 2 draws extensively on biblical judgment texts — Psalm 140:11 (burning coals falling on the wicked), Psalm 11:6 (fire and sulfur and scorching wind), Proverbs 1:22 (scoffers who delight in their scoffing), Isaiah 34:9 (streams of pitch in Edom's destruction). The Aramaic phrase עקר שרשהי — its roots were uprooted — closes the judgment movement.

The theological structure is classic Qumran: the covenant community as the tree that thrives; the wicked, the scoffers, those outside the covenant — as the tree whose roots are torn out and burned with pitch. The Hodayot's most sustained metaphor (1QHa XIV–XVI: the Teacher as a tree of life besieged by a marsh of waters) finds its miniature here: one column of flourishing, one column of fire.

The Qimron PDF font encoding renders most of the body text opaque; the translation presents only apparatus-confirmed readings. Lacunae dominate; the theological shape is clear even where the specific words are not.

Fragment 1

[...] [...]
[...] songs [...]
[...] praises [...]
[...] [...]

(Fragment 1 yields only scattered vocabulary; no continuous passage is recoverable.)

Fragment 2 — Column i — The Flourishing

[...] [...]
[...] raised a branch and bore fruit, [...]
and gave abundantly. [...]
[...] [...]
[...] to glorify for generations of eternity and to bear fruit — [...]
[...] [...]

Fragment 2 — Column ii — The Judgment

[...] let burning coals fall upon them; [...]
fire and sulfur and scorching wind — their portion. [...]
[...] [...]
[...] scoffers who delight in their scoffing — [...]
[...] streams of pitch [...]
[...] its roots were uprooted. [...]

Colophon

Hodayot-like Text B (4Q433a)
Qumran Cave 4. Hebrew and Aramaic. Approximately 1st century BCE.

Translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic 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. 874–875. Classification: Eileen Schuller (Hodayot-like Texts). The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; translation based entirely on apparatus-confirmed readings.

Line sources: Fragment 1 vocabulary (שירות, תחבשות — apparatus body); "ונשא ענף ועשה פרי" and "ויתן רב" (Fragment 2 col. i, apparatus line 3–4); judgment cluster: "ימוטו עליהם גחלים" (Ps 140:11), "ימטר על רשעים פחים ואש וגפרית" (Ps 11:6), "ולצים לצון חמדו להם" (Prov 1:22), "נחלי זפת" (Isa 34:9), "עקר שרשהי" (Aramaic — apparatus).

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

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Source Text: הודיות-כ ב (4Q433a)

Hebrew and Aramaic, Qumran Cave 4. Apparatus-verified readings only, after Qimron composite edition (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), pp. 874–875. The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; only apparatus-confirmed phrases are presented. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured.

Fragment 1 (Apparatus-Confirmed Vocabulary)

[...]
[...] שירות [...]
[...] תחבשות [...]
[...]

(Thanksgiving/praise vocabulary; no continuous passage recoverable.)

Fragment 2, Column i — The Flourishing (Apparatus-Confirmed)

[...]
[...] ונשא ענף ועשה פרי [...]
   ויתן רב [...]
[...]
[...] לפאר לדורות עולמים ולעשות פרי [...]
[...]

Fragment 2, Column ii — The Judgment (Apparatus-Confirmed)

[...] ימוטו עליהם גחלים [...]
   ימטר על רשעים פחים ואש וגפרית [...]
[...]
[...] ולצים לצון חמדו להם [...]
[...] נחלי זפת [...]
[...] עקר שרשהי [...]

(Final phrase עקר שרשהי is Aramaic: "its roots were uprooted.")

Source Colophon

Apparatus-verified Hebrew and Aramaic after Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts (Zenodo 2020, CC BY 4.0), pp. 874–875. Biblical cross-references: Ps 140:11, Ps 11:6, Prov 1:22, Isa 34:9. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured beyond apparatus-confirmed readings.

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