dssdead-sea-scrolls
E — Wisdom Literature
Part 3
A severely damaged wisdom text survives in four fragments, yielding only one intact instruction: place a lock on the lips and a guarding door before the tongue. The image draws on a pattern running through Proverbs and Psalms — that the disciplined mouth is a gate, and what passes through it either preserves or destroys covenant. The Holy Order consistently marks its servants by this discipline: speech is weight, and the untested word is a breach in the wall.
1
This badly mutilated wisdom composition is represented by four fragments. They contain only one translatable sentence. For the editio princeps, see A. Steudel, DJD, XX, 164-7. Fr. Put a lock on your lips and protecting doors to your tongue..
