There's this weird thing which happens in the Great Psalms Scroll in the 16th column. After Psalm 136, Psalm 118 follows directly on. That Psalm 118 follows Psalm 136 is not the weird thing. That sort of thing happens a lot, and is really interesting and quite fun, and has been keeping me entertained for months now.
But the weird thing, or things, are three-fold.
The first is that Psalm 118 follows directly on, not starting on a new line, not signalling a new paragraph. (You can have a look at it here at the DSS library! Psalm 118 begins with the fourth word on the top right.)
The second is that we've already seen Psalm 118 in this scroll! Way back in the early columns, which are only fragmentary, the last few verses of Psalm 118 begins column vi and leads directly on to - you guessed it - Psalm 104! (The fragmentary columns are in lower case Roman numerals, while those parts of the whole scroll are either in capital Roman numerals, or, as per my practice, in normal numbers.)
The third thing however is the contents of Psalm 118 in column 16 aren't what we expect. It goes something like (and in this order) 118:1, 15-16, 8, 9α, 9β, 29. For this reason this isn't Psalm 118 proper, but what is called a "catena", meaning a connected series of texts; the connection being they are all drawn from Psalm 118.
At first glance there are two versions of v9, what I'm calling 9α and 9β. But properly speaking, v8 and v9 are very similar; they are versions of each other. What we meet in this catena then is a third variation, and also much more interesting versions of the v8 and 9 we are familiar with.
Here are the normal v8 and 9 in Hebrew and then English:
8 טוֹב לַחֲסוֹת בַּיהוָה מִבְּטֹחַ בָּאָדָם׃
9 טוֹב לַחֲסוֹת בַּיהוָה מִבְּטֹחַ בִּנְדִיבִים׃
8 It is better to shelter in Yhwh than to trust in man.
9 It is better to shelter in Yhwh than to trust in nobles.
You notice a clear pattern: "It is better to shelter in Yhwh than to trust in X", where X can change.
What is different in 11Q5 (this scroll we're looking at) is that each verse has more internal variation, as well as having a third permutation.
Again, in Hebrew then in English (you'll notice this is unpointed Hebrew text, and also that I haven't written Yhwh in Paleo-Hebrew as per the scroll, because I don't know how to make my computer do that.)
8 טוב לבטוח ביהוה מבטוח באדם׃
9α טוב לחסות ביהוה מבטוב בנדיבים׃
9β טוב לבטוב ביהוה מבטוח באלף עם׃
8 It is better to trust in Yhwh than to trust in man.
9α It is better to shelter in Yhwh than to depend on nobles.
9β It is better to depend on Yhwh than to trust in 1000 people.
The basic form is the same, but you can see there are more variations here. It's not just "better to shelter in Yhwh than to trust in X", but each verse begins with a different verb (trust, shelter, depend), and ends with another variation also. Notably there is no variation which has the same "shelter-trust" as per the Masoretic text.
Another interesting point is the third variation, which seems to build on the first two: man > nobles > 1000 people. I also don't know the new verb, which I've translated "depend". It seems to be a synonym for "trust" but it has all the same letters as "good" (the first word in each clause translated as "better"). I probably need a dictionary of Qumran Hebrew to figure that one out with more certainty.
You might want to know why this extra clause, and that's certainly a good question, but one that's impossible to answer from this perspective. We may actually want to ask the question the other way: why did the Masoretic Text leave out that third clause, and standardise the form of the two clauses it retained?
In any case, it's fascinating to see this additional clause, which while not adding anything new in terms of theology, certainly adds to the numbers game: sure, I would trust Yhwh better than one man, and better than some nobles. But an army? 1000 people? Well actually, yes, to trust in Yhwh is indeed still better.
