Confusing the tongue and separating the peoples.

Cave 4 Hebrew. Multiple fragments. Published in DJD XIX (Johann Maier, Qumran Cave 4.XIV: Parabiblical Texts, Part 2, Clarendon Press, 1997). Qimron composite edition, pp. 202–205.

4Q464 is a parabiblical exposition tracing the patriarchal narratives through the motif of the holy language (לשון הקודש). The Second Temple conviction — attested in Jubilees 12:25–26 and rabbinic tradition — held that Hebrew was the original divine tongue, scattered at Babel, and preserved through Abraham's lineage. This text appears to have organized that conviction into a chronological exposition: the dispersal of peoples and confusion of tongues at Babel, the election of Abraham as the keeper of the holy language, a citation of God's covenant prophecy about the Egyptian sojourn (Genesis 15), and a precise chronological note about Ishmael's birth (Genesis 16:16). The fragments are severely damaged. Of the primary text, only Fragment 7 yields a complete readable sentence; the other fragments are preserved only in partial lines where the apparatus vocabulary confirms the overarching themes.

The closest parallel is Jubilees 12:25–27: the angel of the Presence opens the books of Hebrew writing for Abram, who had forgotten the language, so that he might read and speak it — the moment of linguistic re-election before the Covenant of the Pieces.

Fragments 1–6 — The Ark, Abraham, and the Tower

(Primary text severely fragmentary. Only partial readings survive. The apparatus vocabulary confirms the following themes.)

The fragments open with a chronological reckoning — days numbered from the time of the ark, an endpoint described as "until the end" (עד קץ) — and move into the patriarchal genealogy: Abraham, son of Terah, in Haran. Subsequent fragments address the Tower of Babel and its consequences: the confusing of the tongue and the separation of the peoples (בלת לשון ומפרד עמים), designated in the apparatus as their confusion (תבלותם). The text appears to treat the Babel event as a catastrophe of language — the shattering of the original holy tongue into the babble of nations — with the patriarchal lineage as the vessel through which it survived.

(Continuous text not recoverable. The main fragment body is preserved in a Type1 Hebrew font — Miqdas — whose encoding is not extractable from the available PDF edition; translation here is based on the apparatus vocabulary and confirmed scripture quotations.)

Fragment 7 — Ishmael's Birth

Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.

(Genesis 16:16 — quoted verbatim in the fragment as a chronological marker.)

Colophon

Translated from Hebrew (4Q464) by a Good Works tulku under the auspices of the New Tianmu Anglican Church. Source: Qimron composite edition, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), pp. 202–205. The primary text body is preserved in the Miqdas Type1 font, whose glyph encoding cannot be decoded from the PDF; the apparatus vocabulary (RamatGan Unicode font) yields the confirmed themes and variants presented here. Fragment 7 (Genesis 16:16) is fully attested in Unicode. The holy language motif and Tower of Babel vocabulary are confirmed from the apparatus; the Genesis 15 covenant citation is attested in DJD XIX (Maier, 1997). All unreadable material is marked lacunose. The translation is honest about its limits. Compiled March 2026.

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