Purify your heart. Do not go astray after your hearts.

(Fragment 1, lines 1–2: too fragmentary for continuous translation.)

[...] God [...] [...]

[...] a guilty, stubborn heart [...] [...]

[...] a heavy heart [...]

[...] stiff-necked [...] [...]

[...] mouth wide with wrongdoing [...] [...]

(Fragment 2: lines 1–4 too fragmentary. Lines 5–8 legible.)

[...] and he shall not rejoice [...] [...]

[...] wonders [...]

[...] do not be afraid of the ruthless [...] [...]

[...] Purify your heart. [...]

[...] Do not go astray after your hearts. [...]

(Fragment 3: isolated phrases.)

[...] fire of his deeds [...] [...]

[...] he enlarged his mouth [...]

[...] stiff-necked in spirit [...] [...]

Colophon

Source: 4Q487, Caves of Qumran (Cave 4), first century BCE. A Cave 4 papyrus fragment (hence pap4QSap Work B in scholarly catalogs). Published in Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, Vol. 3 (Yad Ben-Zvi, 2015). Primary publication: M. Baillet, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert VII: Qumrân Grotte 4, III (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982).

Tradition: Judean sectarian sapiential literature. 4Q487 belongs to the wisdom tradition at Qumran — a group of texts that develop ethical and theological instruction through the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. The surviving fragments present a portrait of the sinner in concentrated vocabulary: stubborn heart (lev sharir, לב שריר), guilty heart (levav ashmah, אשמה לב), stiff-necked (qesheh ʿoref, קשה עורף), a heavy or hardened heart (kovod lev, כובד לב), and mouth wide with wrongdoing (raḥov pi ashmah, רחוב פי אשמה). This cluster of terms recalls the Pentateuchal characterization of Israel's obstinacy (Exodus 32:9; Deuteronomy 9:6, 13) redeployed as a wisdom typology — not a national description but a portrait of the individual sinner's character. The phrase "mouth wide with wrongdoing" anticipates a tradition of associating boastful speech with moral failure, attested also in Psalm 10:7 and the Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184). The call to the righteous — "purify your heart" (tsarof levkha, צרוף לבכה) and "do not go astray after your hearts" (lo titoru aḥare levavkhem, לא תתורו אחרי לבבכם) — is a direct citation of Numbers 15:39, the commandment attached to wearing fringes (tsitsit) as a guard against the heart's wandering. The scroll deploys this citation as the pivot from portrait to call: the sinner's stubborn, wide-mouthed, fire-driven life is the fate of the one who goes astray after his heart; the righteous is summoned away from that path through active purification. The fragment "fire of his deeds" (esh maʿasav, אש מעשיו) echoes the judgment oracles of the Hebrew prophets and the Two Spirits teaching of the Community Rule (1QS IV), which speaks of an "eternal burning" reserved for the spirit of perversity. The phrase "he shall not rejoice" (lo yagil, ולא יגל) appears in similar contexts of judgment against the wicked in the Psalms and prophetic literature.

Note on lacunae: Square brackets indicate lacunae; ellipses indicate fragmentary lines. The three fragments of 4Q487 are heavily damaged. No gaps have been filled beyond what the transcription yields. The "fire of his deeds," "stiff-necked in spirit," and "enlarged his mouth" are fragmentary phrases whose syntactic context is lost.

Translation: New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026 (from Hebrew transcription in Qimron composite edition). This translation is independent of existing English renderings.

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