The Dead Sea Scrolls: 11Q10 Targum Job

With the Dead Sea Scrolls in the District of Columbia this year, I’ve been writing some posts about the particular scrolls that are visiting.My first and second posts covered copies of biblical manuscripts found at Qumran, but now I will move on to some of the other literature there. In this post, we will explore 11Q10 Targum Job.

The term “targum” comes from the Aramaic term for “translation,” thus a “targum” is an Aramaic translation of a portion of the Hebrew Bible. Aramaic is a language in the Semitic language family, closely related to Hebrew. It was adopted as an administrative language by the Assyrian empire, and continued in use by subsequent empires. It could be used by speakers of different languages from Egypt to Mesopotamia to communicate, though for many in Syria and Mesopotamia it would have been their first language. With the spread of Greek and later Roman domination, Greek began to replace Aramaic as a lingua franca, but at the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were written and used this process was far from complete.

Thus, most Jews at the time would have been more familiar with Aramaic than Hebrew, and for many it would have been their first language. In Judea, Hebrew was still spoken, but elsewhere, Aramaic was the main language used by Jewish communities. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Aramaic was thus a priority for their use in Jewish communities. The translation method can vary between more literal approaches to more interpretive approaches, sometimes including long expansions which tell us a lot about how the text is being interpreted. Of course, even a relatively literal translation is already an interpretation of the text, especially for places where the text is difficult and the translator must decide between different options if they want to translate it at all.

Targums have come down to us for most of the books of the Hebrew Bible, and for some books, especially the Pentateuch, we have multiple targums. However, the dating of these targums varies widely, even among expert scholars. Some scholars date targums very early, as if they were a direct witness to biblical translation and interpretation around the time of Christ. Other scholars date them much later: for example, they may detect references to the Muslim conquest and subsequent events, which would put a targum centuries after Christ. Each targum has to be treated case-by-case when it comes to dating, but overall the most likely scenario is that some parts of a given targum are quite old, but that it has been updated over centuries. This poses challenges for using the targums as evidence for ancient interpretation.

That is why it is exciting that targums are among the texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In these texts, we get a glimpse of biblical interpretation that can be securely dated before the first century AD. 11Q10 Targum Job is the more extensive of two targums on the book of Job found at Qumran, covering portions of Job 17:14–42:12 in thirty-nine columns.

The book of Job tells the story of Job, bereft of children and property as a result of a contest between God and Satan, and his three friends who come to comfort him. Their comfort turns into exhortations to repent and then full-fledged accusations of deserving his suffering as their argument with Job escalates. The columns that have travelled to us in DC cover Job chapters 35-36. These chapters contain part of the speech of Elihu, a character distinct from Job’s three infamous friends who has criticisms for both Job and his friends. Interpreters disagree about whether Elihu’s speech should be seen as equally misguided as the three friends in its criticism of Job, or as a fully justified anticipation of God’s own words in the subsequent theophany, so this is a particularly interesting section of the book. In what follows, I will comment on a few of the translation decisions that seem most interesting to me.

But one does not say, “Where is God, my Maker, who gives songs in the night?”

But [they] do not say, [“Where is] God our maker, and the one who apportions to us [begetting of sons of righteousne]ss as our planting in the night?

In the context, Elihu is describing humans in general, and how they fail to think of God in the midst of suffering. In 35:9, he has described humanity using plural verbs, but the original Hebrew switches to a generic singular in in this verse. The targum smooths this out by maintaining the plural for this verse, in the verbs and also by switching the pronoun “my” to “our.”

More significant is what the targum does with the word I have translated “songs” (zǝmirôt). The ancient translations went different ways in interpreting this term. The vowel pointing of the Masoretic Text points this as a word for “song” (zāmîr), but the Old Greek reads the pointing differently as a word for “strength” (zimrâ). Given the plural, “songs” seems more likely, and this is the translation of the Vulgate, the later Greek translators Aquila and Theodotion, and a later Job Targum. This later targum expands the clause into “he before whom the angels on high direct praise in the night.” The Syriac Peshitta has “thoughts,” possibly due to a textual error – a single letter dropping out from the text would allow one to read zimmôt, “plans.”

11Q10 Targum Job seems to go in a completely different direction. It is unfortunate that there is a gap here, leaving “as our planting” as the only clear equivalent for the disputed term, though it is likely the entire gap was devoted to unpacking its interpretation. Even the meaning of “our planting” is not completely secure - Sokoloff has interpreted it as “for our firmness” instead Sokoloff, The Targum to Job from Qumran Cave XI (1974), p.79, 136. This interpretation is possible, but the term “planting” (Aramaic niṣbâ – note that vowels are an educated guess) is a theologically significant term in most of its other occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Consider its use in this quote from the fragments of the book of Enoch found at Qumran (I’ve restored the gaps from the later Ethiopic version):

[Concerning the sons of righteousness and concerning the chosen of eternity] and concerning the planting of truth...Enoch 93:2

The term is associated with the generation of a line of righteous offspring. It has its origins in Isaiah 5:7, 60:20, and 61:3, and seems to have been conflated with the many other plant terms that are used as metaphors for offspring in Isaiah. In the book of Enoch, it is used to describe future generations of the righteous arising after Enoch or Noah (besides the examples already cited, cf. Enoch 10:3 and 84:6).

But why choose this term to translate Job 35:10? What may have happened is that the difficult term that was interpreted as the term “shoot” (zǝmôrâ, construed in the plural as zǝmōrôt, “shoots”). This term is not used as a metaphor for offspring in the Hebrew Bible, although it is used as a metaphor for the inhabitants of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 15. After reading it as a plant term, the translator of the Job Targum may have simply conflated it with all the other plants are offspring metaphors.

Next, the accompanying phrase “in the night” may have made him think specifically of the moment of conception of children. In his understanding, the passage would flow from an affirmation that God is our maker to the specific affirmation that God empowers the mysterious process of conception by which we are individually created. And since “planting” (niṣbâ) tends to be a term for the community of the righteous in its other attestations, it may be that it is particularly righteous offspring that are in view: God continues the generation of the righteous in the world as his precious planting that evil cannot snuff out. This is something for which humans should be grateful, though (in the context of Elihu’s argument) they often fail to do so.

Does a reference to the moment of conception seem too prurient for such a religious text? The Qumran community does not seem to have had an issue with this sort of thing. There is a similar use of the term “planting” in the Genesis Apocryphon, a text which itself has close ties to the Enochite literature. The relevant section concerns the birth of Noah. Something about the boy’s appearance disturbs his father Lamech. According to Enoch 106:2-3, which is partially attested at Qumran, Noah was born with a body “whiter than snow and redder than a rose,” with white hair, eyes that shined light, and he sang praises to God at birth. Due to these supernatural symptoms, Lamech suspects that he has been cuckolded by one of the fallen angels known as the Watchers. This understandably upsets his wife Bitenosh, who responds by recounting the night of the child’s conception in somewhat steamy language to assure Lamech that he is the father. In the course of their argument, she says, “...this seed is from you, and this pregnancy was from you, and the planting (niṣbat) of [this] fruit was from you” (1QGenesis Apocryphon 2.15). The cognate verb returns again a few columns later when Noah describes his own birth, saying “I was planted (nǝṣîbit) for truth” (6.1) – this may be a reference to his being a legitimate child, but the context focuses more on his life of righteousness from birth.

The upshot seems to be that 11Q10 Targum Job is interpreting a difficult Hebrew term in Job in light of a term which was popular at Qumran due to its use in Enochite literature. Note that I have restored a reference to “begetting” in the gap in this verse. Restorations of missing text should not be taken too seriously. Impressive interpretations can be built up on a plausible restoration, but at the end of the day, one could always come up with a different plausible restoration. The term “planting” though is present, and most likely does refer to offspring. My restoration in the gap is merely meant to show one way that the gap could be understood consistent with this interpretation. This does highlight the difficulty of working with texts with a bunch of gaps in them. It would be a lot easier to confirm or disconfirm my interpretation if we had the whole line available to us!

And if they do not listen, they will pass over into Shelach, and they will perish without knowledge.

[And if they do not lis]ten, they will fall by the sword, and they will perish without k[nowledge.]

What in the world does it mean to pass over into “Shelach?” The only other place we see this term is in Job 33:18. Scholars conjecture it is a name related to the underworld, possibly for a river one crosses to the underworld. The Peshitta seems to follow this interpretation and substitutes a more common name for death, translating “they will go into Abaddon.” However, “Shelach” has a homonym which means “weapon,” thus the Vulgate translates “they will pass away by the sword.” Manuscripts of the later Targum Job represent three different solutions: “by weapons of war,” “swiftly,” or “into weariness/desolation.” The Old Greek simply avoids the issue with a periphrastic translation of the verse: “But the ungodly he does not save because they do not want to known the Lord and because when they were being warned they did not listen.” 11Q10 Targum Job, then, represents the earliest attestation of the interpretation of this phrase as a reference to weapons. It is an example of a translational solution found in the Peshitta, Vulgate, and later Targum tradition which goes all the way back to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Look, God is great, and we cannot know the number of his years, and without searching out.

Look, God is great, and his days are many which [we cannot k]now, and the number of his years are without end.

The Hebrew is a little awkward, as my translation shows. Nevertheless, all the ancient versions seem to be translating this same text. But 11Q10Targum Job has an insertion here, “his days are many,” as well as re-arranging some of the conjunctions. It is possible that it reflects the original text here, and that “his days are many” dropped out. The alternative is that the targum is trying to fix the text in translation, but there are many more obvious ways to do this – deleting the final conjunction, or adding “his days” to the last clause instead. This is thus an example of the value of this targum for text criticism.

To summarize, 11Q10 Targum Job provides us with a lot of interesting information about how people around the time of Christ were interpreting the book of Job.