Σ Scriptorium Press · The Plainspoken Classics

The Damascus Document — Column 10

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

📖 Read in the book reader 🎧 Listen (audiobook) 📚 The whole book 🔖 Reader's guide

A witness for the judges, to put a man to death by his testimony, who has not completed his days to pass

among those enrolled — let him fear God [...] Let no man be trusted against his fellow

as a witness who has defiantly broken any instruction of the precept, until he is cleared to return [...]

And this is the rule for the judges of the congregation [...] up to ten chosen men

from the congregation, according to the time: four from the tribe of Levi and Aaron, and from Israel

six, learned in the Book of Hagu and grounded in the covenant's principles, from among the sons of five

and twenty years old, up to sons of sixty years old [...] And let no one stand any longer, from one of

having reached sixty years or more, to render judgment for the assembly, because of human disloyalty

his days were shortened, and in the wrath of God against the inhabitants of the land he said to remove

their knowledge before they complete their days [...] concerning purification by water [...] Let no man

wash in dirty water, or in water too little to cover a man [...]

let no vessel be purified in them. And any pool in rock which does not have enough

to cover, which the unclean has touched, its water is unclean like the water of a vessel [...]

concerning the [Sabbath], observing it as its statute requires [...] let no man do, on the day

of the sixth [day], any work from the time that the disk of the sun

is distant from the gate by its fullness [...] for it is he who said, Keep

the Sabbath day, hallowing it [...] And on the Sabbath day let no man speak a

foolish or empty word [...] Let him not press his fellow for any debt [...] Let him not judge concerning wealth and profit [...]

Let him not speak about matters of work and labor to be done the next morning [...]

Let no man walk in the field to carry out the work of his business

[on] the Sabbath [...] Let him go no farther beyond his city's limits than a thousand cubits [...]

Let no man eat on the Sabbath day except what is prepared [...] and from what is lost

in the field, let him not eat nor drink, except if it was in the camp [...]

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