A text-critical analysis of Lamentations 1:7 in 4QLam and the Masoretic text

Abstract

Taking the contributions of the Dead Sea scrolls to the discipline of Old Testament (OT) textual criticism as its point of departure, this study provides a text-critical analysis of the wordings of Lam 1:7 in 4QLam and the Masoretic Text (MT). The aims of the analysis are twofold. Firstly, it seeks to determine how the variant readings in the two Hebrew textual representatives of the verse came into being during the process of transmission. Secondly, it establishes how the differences in wording affect the content of the verse. The study concludes that the data provided by such a text-critical analysis can be relevant to biblical interpretation if two conditions are met. Firstly, the textus receptus and/or original text should not be treated as the only legitimate representative(s) of an Old Testament writing's content. Secondly, the differences in the wordings between the textual representatives should be shown to affect the content of a passage.