Damascus Document

The well-diggers allegory; ordinances for community life

3But God remembered the covenant with the forefathers : And He raised up from Aaron men of understanding, And from Israel wise men:

4And He made them to hearken, And they digged the well. 5 ‘A well the princes digged, The nobles of the people delved it By the order of the Lawgiver.’

6The well is the Law, and they who digged it are the penitents of Israel who went forth out of the land of Judah and sojourned in the land of Damascus, all of whom God called princes. 7,

8For they sought Him and His glory was not turned back in the mouth of one (of them). And the Lawgiver is he who studies the Law, in regard to whom Isaiah said, ‘ He bringeth forth an instrument into ny and renders ‘when I. was delivered for the first time’. But this would require nym. I emend as follows: .

129 for his work.’ And the nobles of the people are those who came to dig the well by the precepts in the which the Lawgiver ordained that they should walk throughout the full period of the wickedness. And save them they shall get nothing until there arises the Teacher of Righteousness in the end of‏

13And in respect to robbing the poor of His people, So that widows may be their spoil, And they may murder the fatherless:

14And to make a difference between the clean and the unclean and to make men discern between 15 the holy and the profane: And to observe the Sabbath according to its true meaning and the feasts and the day of the Fast according to the utterances of them who entered into the New

16Covenant in the land of Damascus: To contribute their holy things according to the true inter17 pretation: To love every one his brother as himself, and to strengthen the hand of the poor 18 and the needy and the stranger, and to seek every one the peace of his brother: To hold aloof from harlots according to the law: and that no man should commit a trespass against his next 19 of kin: To rebuke every one his brother according to the commandment, and not to bear a grudge 20 from day to day, and to separate from all the pollutions according to their judgements. And no man to hold aloof... from the wealth of the Sanctuary. Can this be a pregnant expression for ‘to hold aloof... from robbing the wealth, &c.’? If so, we might compare Test. Lev.

173 shall make abominable (with these) his holy spirit, according as God separated (these) from them. 2