"A day in your courts is better — one day."
— 4Q411, apparatus-confirmed line 4, echoing Psalm 84:11
4Q411 — Sapiential Hymn — Dead Sea Scrolls, Cave 4
A single Hebrew manuscript from Cave 4, now held in the Israel Antiquities Authority collection. Published in the Qimron composite edition. The Qimron PDF uses a proprietary font encoding that renders the body text opaque to direct extraction; the translation below is based entirely on apparatus-confirmed readings, primarily through cross-references to 4Q185 and standard biblical texts.
The hymn belongs to the Qumran sapiential tradition — the same current as 4Q185 (Sapiential Work) and the Instruction scroll (1Q/4QInstruction). It opens with an exhortation not to cease fearing God, warns against being cut off from the land of the living, and then grounds both imperatives in the character of God himself: the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, who by his understanding established the heavens, who created all things. Between the warning and the cosmological praise stands a single luminous citation from Psalm 84: a day in your courts is better — one day. The reasoning is implicit but unmistakable: the God who made the heavens, before whom the wise would rather spend one day as a doorkeeper than a thousand elsewhere — that God is reason enough not to cease your fear.
The text is fragmentary; only the apparatus-confirmed Hebrew phrases are translatable with confidence. Nothing has been conjectured beyond what Qimron's cross-references establish.
Fragment 1
[...] [...]
Do not cease to fear God; [...]
lest you be cut off from the land of the living — [...]
for a day in your courts is better.
One day [...]
[...] [...]
[...] who knows [...]
[...] who is wise [...]
[...]
[...] who stretches out the heavens like a curtain
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in — [...]
by his understanding he stretched out the heavens. [...]
The LORD created [...] and [he] created [...]
The LORD created [...]
He created [...] [...]
[...]
Colophon
Sapiential Hymn (4Q411)
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. 859–860. Cross-references to 4Q185 in Qimron confirm the apparatus-verified lines; all other body text in the Qimron PDF uses a proprietary font encoding that prevents direct extraction. Translation based solely on apparatus-confirmed Hebrew readings.
Line-by-line sources: Do not cease to fear (apparatus body); lest you be cut off from the land of the living (apparatus body); "כי טוב יום בחצריך / יום אחד" (Ps 84:11, apparatus cross-ref to 4Q185 lines 5–4); "הנוטה כדק שמים וימתחם כאהל לשבת" (Isa 40:22, apparatus cross-ref line 9); "ובתבונתו נטה שמים" (Prov 3:19, apparatus cross-ref line 12); "ברא יהוה... ברא אלהים" (creation formula, apparatus lines 11–13).
Good Works Translation (NTAC + Claude). New Tianmu Anglican Church, Mar/2026.
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Source Text: שיר חוכמה (4Q411)
Hebrew, Qumran Cave 4. Apparatus-verified readings only, after Qimron composite edition (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0). The Qimron PDF font encoding blocks direct body-text extraction; only the apparatus-confirmed phrases are presented here. Lines not recoverable are omitted.
Fragment 1 — Apparatus-Confirmed Readings
[...] [...]
אל תחדל לירא את [...] אלוה [...]
פן יקצה [...] הכרת מארץ חיים [...]
כי טוב יום בחצריך
יום אחד [...]
[...] [...]
[...] ידעתי את [...]
[...] מי חכם [...]
[...]
הנוטה כדק שמים וימתחם כאהל לשבת [...]
ובתבונתו נטה שמים [...]
יהוה ברא [...] ו[הוא] ברא [...]
יהוה ברא [...]
ברא [...] [...]
[...]
(Body text outside these apparatus-confirmed lines is unrecoverable from the Qimron PDF encoding.)
Source Colophon
Apparatus-verified Hebrew after Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts (Zenodo 2020, CC BY 4.0), pp. 859–860. Biblical cross-references: Ps 84:11, Isa 40:22, Prov 3:19. Parallel text: 4Q185 (Sapiential Work). Lacunae marked with [...]; no text conjectured beyond apparatus-confirmed readings.
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