Σ Scriptorium Press · The Plainspoken Classics

The Damascus Document — Column 9

The Qumran Community · a new plain-English translation from the original language

📖 Read in the book reader 🎧 Listen (audiobook) 📚 The whole book

Any man who devotes a man to destruction from among men by the laws of the gentiles shall be put to death [...]

And as for what it says, 'You shall not take revenge and you shall not bear a grudge' against the sons of your people — and any man among those who enter

the covenant who brings against his companion a matter that was not established by rebuke before witnesses,

and brings it in his burning anger, or tells it to his elders to disgrace him — he is one who takes revenge and bears a grudge [...]

And it is written only that he takes revenge on his adversaries and bears a grudge against his enemies [...]

If he kept silent about it from day to day, and then in his burning anger spoke against him about a capital matter,

he has testified against him, since he failed to carry out what God commanded, saying to him, 'You shall surely

rebuke your companion, and you shall not bear sin because of him' [...] concerning the oath of which it

says, 'your hand shall not save you for yourself' [...] a man who administers an oath in the open field,

not before the judges nor by their statement � his own hand has kept for himself [...] and every lost thing

whose thief is not known, from the substance of the camp in which it was stolen, its owner shall administer an oath

with the oath of the curse [...] and the one who hears, if he knows and does not tell, he is guilty [...]

Every restitution for guilt that is returned, which has no owner, and its instruction and confession — the one who restores it, it belongs to the priest,

and it shall be his, besides the ram brought as the guilt offering [...] likewise every recovered lost object that has no

owner shall belong to the priests, for its finder does not know its rule [...]

If no owner is found for it, they shall keep it [...] Any matter in which

a man acts unfaithfully against the law, and his companion sees him, and he alone — if it is a capital matter, he shall make it known to him

before his eyes, in rebuking, to the Overseer, and the Overseer shall write it down with his own hand, until he does it

again before one witness; and he shall return and make it known to the Overseer [...] If he does it again and is caught before

one witness, his judgment is complete [...] But if there are two of them, and they testify concerning

a different matter, one each, the man shall be excluded from the purity, provided they are trustworthy —

and on the day he notices it, that person must report it to the Overseer [...] and regarding property they shall accept two

trustworthy witnesses, but regarding a single witness, so as to bar him from the purity [...] and he shall not be accepted

An original translation made in 2026 by Scriptorium Press, working directly from the original language text (never from another English translation), in one consistent modern voice. Free to read, download, and listen — no accounts, no ads, nothing for sale.

← All of The Qumran Community: The Dead Sea Scrolls