The Qumran Community · a new plain-English translation from the original language
And now, listen, all who know righteousness, and understand the deeds of
God [...] for He has a dispute with all flesh, and judgment He will execute on all who despise Him [...]
for in their unfaithfulness in abandoning Him, He turned His countenance away from Israel and from His holy place
and gave them to the sword [...] and being mindful of the pact made with the fathers, He preserved a remnant
for Israel, and did not give them over to destruction [...] and in the era of wrath, three hundred
and ninety years after He gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon
He visited them [...] and He caused a root of planting to sprout from Israel and from Aaron, to possess
His land and to grow fat on the goodness of His soil [...] and they understood their iniquity and knew that
they were culpable men [...] and they resembled blind men, and those groping to find the road
twenty years [...] and God took note of their conduct, since they sought Him wholeheartedly
and He raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart [...] and made known
to later generations what He did in the last generation to the congregation of traitors
they are those who turn aside from the way [...] this is the time of which it was written, like a stubborn heifer
so Israel was stubborn [...] when the Man of Scoffing arose, who poured out upon Israel
waters of lies, and led them astray in a trackless waste, to bring low the eternal heights and to turn aside
from the righteous paths, and to shift away the boundary which the forefathers had set in their inheritance, in order to
bring upon them the curses of His covenant, to deliver them to the sword of the vengeance that avenges
the covenant [...] because they sought smooth things, and chose delusions, and watched eagerly
for breaches, and chose the fair neck, and justified the wicked and condemned the righteous [...]
and transgressed the covenant and broke the law, and banded together against the soul of the righteous, and against all who walk
in perfection, whom their soul detested, and they chased after them with the blade, exulting in conflict with [...] and anger burned