In the night: songs and words of praise. And in the day: songs and words of praise.
Introduction
The Order of Divine Service (4Q334) is a liturgical calendar text from Cave 4, preserved in two fragmentary columns. It belongs to the body of sectarian liturgical texts that organized the Qumran community's prayer life around a precise schedule of praise — alongside the Words of the Luminaries (4Q504), the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400–407), and the daily blessing texts preserved in the Community Rule (1QS VI).
The text is constructed entirely around a single repeating formula: for each numbered position in the cycle, the community performs songs (שירות) and words of praise (דברי תחבשות) at both night and day. The surviving fragment preserves stations corresponding to the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eighteenth positions — a counting pattern consistent with the Qumran priestly rotation calendar (the Mishmarot system), in which a six-year cycle of twenty-six priestly watches governed both temple service and communal prayer.
The Community Rule mandates that the congregation praise God "at all the fixed times he has established" — morning and evening, new moon, Sabbath, and yearly festival (1QS X.1–8). The Order of Divine Service may represent the liturgical implementation of that mandate: the actual schedule that governed when the community sang and when it gave thanks.
The two columns are severely fragmentary. Many lines survive only as partial repeating formulas.
Fragment 1, Column 1
[Lines 1–2: too fragmentary.]
[Line 1:] [...] in the night [...]
[Line 2:] [...] words of praise [...]
Fragment 1, Column 2
[Line 1:] In the eighth night: songs [...] and words of praise [...]
[Line 2:] And in the day: songs and words of praise [...] nine [...] in the night [...]
[Line 3:] [...] songs and words of praise [...]
[Line 4:] And words of praise [...] in the tenth [...] songs [...] in the night [...]
[Line 5:] And words of praise [...] in the day: songs [...]
Fragment 2, Column 1
[Line 1:] [...] six [...] in the night, and songs and words of praise [...]
[Line 2:] And in the day: songs [and words of praise] [...] at the seventh [...]
[Line 3:] In the night: songs and words of praise [...] and in the day: songs [...]
[Line 4:] In the eighteenth [...] songs and words of praise [...]
[Line 5:] In the night: [songs] and words of praise [...] and in the day: songs [...]
Colophon
Translated from the Hebrew of 4Q334 (Cave 4, Qumran), using the Qimron composite edition (CC BY 4.0, Zenodo 2020) as primary working text. Published in DJD XXI: Calendrical Texts (Talmon, Ben-Dov, and Glessmer, 2001). The manuscript font encoding in the Qimron PDF renders the main body text substantially opaque through standard text extraction. The translation is based on recurring formula elements that could be securely identified across multiple repetitions in the two columns: בלילה (in the night), וביום (and in the day), שירות (songs), ודברי תחבשות (and words of praise), and the counting formulas for the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eighteenth positions. Nothing has been supplied beyond what the visible formula elements allow. All uncertain or missing content is marked with square brackets.
Good Works Translation — New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
🌲
Source Text
4Q334 — Fragment 1, Column 1
[...] בְּלֵי[לָה ...]
[...] דִּבְרֵי תַ]חְבָּשׁ[וֹת ...]
4Q334 — Fragment 1, Column 2
[...] בִּשְׁמוֹנָ]ה בַּלַּיְלָה שִׁ[ירוֹת ...] וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...]
[...] וּבַיּוֹם שִׁירוֹת וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...] תֵּ]שַׁע [...] בַּלַּ[יְלָה ...]
[...] שִׁירוֹת וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...]
[...] וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...] בָּ]עֲשָׂרָה [...] שִׁירוֹ]ת [...] בַּלַּ[יְלָה ...]
[...] וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...] וּבַיּוֹם שִׁירוֹת [...]
4Q334 — Fragment 2, Column 1
[...] שִׁ]שָּׁה [...] בַּלַּיְלָה וְשִׁירוֹת וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...]
[...] וּבַיּוֹם שִׁירוֹת [וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת] [...] בַּ]שְּׁבִיעִי [...]
[...] בַּלַּיְלָה שִׁירוֹת וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...] וּבַיּוֹם שִׁירוֹת [...]
[...] בִּשְׁמוֹנָה עָשָׂ]ר [...] שִׁירוֹת וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...]
[...] בַּלַּיְלָה [שִׁירוֹת] וְדִבְרֵי תַחְבָּשׁוֹת [...] וּבַיּוֹם שִׁירוֹת [...]
Source Colophon
Hebrew transcription of 4Q334 (Cave 4, Qumran), included in the Qimron composite edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls (CC BY 4.0, Zenodo 2020). The above represents the recovered formula elements from the two surviving columns; the majority of each line is lacunose. The Qimron PDF font encoding renders substantial portions of the manuscript body text partially opaque through standard extraction; transcription reflects apparatus-confirmed readings and visually identifiable repeated formulas. Lacunae marked with brackets.
🌲