"Since the days of our fathers we have been in great guilt, until this day."
— 4Q449, after Ezra 9:7

4Q449 — Penitential Prayer — Dead Sea Scrolls, Cave 4

A brief Hebrew manuscript from Cave 4. The text survives in two fragments, both severely lacunose; only scattered lines yield translatable content. What survives, however, is historically significant: the community's confession of inherited guilt is expressed in the exact words of Ezra 9:7 — מימי אבותינו אנחנו באשמה גדלה עד היום הזה, "since the days of our fathers we have been in great guilt, until this day."

Ezra 9 is the great penitential prayer of the Second Temple period. Ezra, confronted with the exiles' intermarriages, tears his garment and falls on his knees before God, confessing that from the days of the ancestors, Israel has been in great guilt, has been given into the hand of foreign kings, to sword, captivity, and plunder. The Qumran community reaches for that confession and makes it their own — the inherited guilt is theirs to carry. They stand in a chain of failure that Ezra inaugurated liturgically and they extend liturgically into their own moment. The prayer is not about specific sin but about the condition of being Israel across time: always in great guilt, always dependent on divine mercy, always beginning again.

The fragment's second recoverable phrase — their soul loathes all food (Ps 107:18) — places this prayer in the context of illness or fasting, though the connection between the two recovered lines may not be sequential. The reference may indicate liturgical use during fasting, or it may be a confession of spiritual exhaustion that the community has translated into physical terms.

The Qimron PDF font encoding renders most of the body text opaque; only the apparatus-confirmed readings are translated. Lacunae dominate both fragments.

Fragment 1

[...] [...] good toward us [...]
since the days of our fathers
we have been in great guilt, until this day — [...]
[...] my spirit, my lot [...]
[...] your true judgment [...]
[...] all our enemies [...]
[...] [...]

Fragment 2

[...] [...]
[...] our festivals [...]
[...] our God [...]
[...] [...]

(Fragment 2 is severely lacunose; the festival and divine-name vocabulary suggests a liturgical context but no continuous passage is recoverable.)

Colophon

Penitential Prayer (4Q449)
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), p. 887. The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; the translation is based on apparatus-confirmed readings only.

Line sources: "מימי אבתינו אנחנו באשמה גדלה עד היום הזה" = Ezra 9:7 verbatim (apparatus line 2); "כל אכל תתעב נפשם" = Ps 107:18 (apparatus); fragment 1 body vocabulary (spirit, lot, judgment, enemies — partially readable in apparatus). Fragment 2 vocabulary (festivals, God) from apparatus.

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

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Source Text: תפילת תשובה (4Q449)

Hebrew, Qumran Cave 4. Apparatus-verified readings only, after Qimron composite edition (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), p. 887. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured.

Fragment 1 (Apparatus-Confirmed Readings)

[...] [...] טוב[...] לנו [...]
מימי אבתינו אנחנו
   באשמה גדלה עד היום הזה [...]
[...] משלה רוחי גורלי [...]
[...] קצת משפטך האמת[ה] [...]
[...] כל אויבינו [...]
[...]

Fragment 2 (Apparatus-Confirmed Vocabulary)

[...]
[...] מועדינו [...]
[...] אלהינו [...]
[...]

(Fragment 2 too lacunose for continuous translation; vocabulary only.)

Apparatus Note

Cross-reference: "כל אכל תתעב נפשם" (Ps 107:18 — their soul loathes all food) confirmed in Qimron apparatus. Placement relative to Fragment 1 uncertain.

Source Colophon

Apparatus-verified Hebrew after Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts (Zenodo 2020, CC BY 4.0), p. 887. Biblical cross-references: Ezra 9:7 (verbatim in line 2), Ps 107:18. Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured beyond apparatus-confirmed readings.

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