(11Q11=11QPsAp a ) תופעת השלמת כתובים בידי מעתיקים והנוסח של תה' צא 4 מקומראן

According to the MT, Ps 91:4 reads: 'With His pinion He will cover you, / Under His wings you will take shelter, / His truth will be your shield and buckler'. As against it, the abovementioned scroll from Qumran runs the verse as follows: '[With] His pinion He will cover [you], / Under His [wings] you will abide, / [His] kindness [upo]n you will be a shield, / A buckler is His truth. Selah'. Scholars have usually preferred the Qumran text, because it submits a 'better parallelism'. This position, however, is not exempt from problems. The scribal practice of adding a colon or even a few words in order to obtain an even parallelism is attested in lQIsa at Isa 1:15 and in the LXX at Ps 13:6; 67:5; 73:28; 132:4; 134:1; 147:8 (although it is possible that some of the latter were introduced by the Greek tradents of the LXX). By conjecture one can detect this phenomenon in the MT at Deut 32:43; Jer 23:10. It appears that an even, paired paralleli sm was preferred by the epigonic scribes who copied Biblical poetry. Classical Hebrew poetry, however, used bicola as well as tricola. Therefore, the tricolon in Ps 91:4MT has the flavor of originality, while the tetracolon (or the double bicolon) of 11Q11 looks as a secondary reworking. The introduction of an extra line with hesed (kindness) was prompted by the odd line with 'amitto ('His truth') that does not connect well with the Lord's pinion and wings. A better solution to this problem was suggested by I. Loew (followed by I. L. Seeligmann). Loew vocalized mtw as ammato, 'His arm'. This suggested reading of >mh - 'mt, absent from Biblical Hebrew, is extant in Ugaritic and was still known in Talmudic times. Hence it deserves to be considered a lectio difficilior. By reading ammato, one obtains in Ps 91:4 a tricolon with three parallel nouns: pinion, wings, arm. The Qumranic text in this verse proves that the Massoretic vocalization ,amittd goes back to ancient times, the Second Commonwealth. Here as elsewhere, the antiquity of the tradition preserved by the Massora does not warrant its correctness.