Deuteronomy 33:2
A fiery law, or angels at His right hand?
The last line of 33:2 is one of the hardest in the Torah. Hebrew manuscripts write a single word, eshdat, which tradition reads as two: "fire of law." The Samaritan text lacks "fire"; the Greek speaks of angels at God's right hand.
Manuscript variant: witnesses differ in wording
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Proposals
- "Fire of law"
- Traditional; the law given in fire at Sinai.
- "Fire flashing" or "warriors"
- Modern emendations reading different Hebrew words.
- "Angels at his right hand"
- The Greek, matching the "holy ones" earlier in the verse; compare Acts 7:53 and Galatians 3:19.
Every witness, in order
Unknown (debated)
Original Deuteronomy
No original survives.
Translated c. 3rd century BC
Septuagint
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
with myriads of angels… his angels were at his right hand
Giguet's French: "avec des myriades d'anges, et ses anges se tenaient à sa droite."
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
In dextera ejus ignea lex
In his right hand a fiery law
Follows the traditional reading.
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
מִימִינוֹ אשדת לָמוֹ
from his right hand… for them
Written as one word (ketiv) אשדת; read (qere) as אֵשׁ דָּת, "fire, law." Dat is otherwise a Persian loanword, which complicates the reading.
Ancient tradition; medieval copies
Samaritan Pentateuch
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Samaritan Pentateuch, Kennicott's 1780 text digitized by A. Sigalov.
מימנו אשדת למו
In the library's Samaritan text there is no separate אש ("fire") here.
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
from his right hand went a fiery law for them
Follows the traditional reading.
What changed, and why
Most translators admit the line is uncertain. It belongs to an ancient poem describing God's coming from the south with "ten thousands of holy ones."
What the evidence shows
- The Masoretic Text writes eshdat as one word and reads it as two.
- The original meaning of 33:2c is known. It remains uncertain.
Sources
- E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Fortress, 2012)
- NET Bible notes on Deuteronomy 33:2 ↗
Related lessons
- The Blessing of Moses →Before he dies, Moses blesses the tribes. The poem opens with God coming from Sinai, Seir and Paran with "ten thousands of saints," and closes: "The eternal God is thy refuge." Compared with Jacob's blessing in Genesis 49, Levi is honored, Joseph is exalted, and Simeon is missing.
- How Deuteronomy Came to Us →Moses on the plains of Moab; a scroll found in Josiah's Temple; an Assyrian loyalty oath; thirty-odd Dead Sea Scrolls, some with readings no modern Hebrew Bible has; a Samaritan Torah that names a different mountain; a Greek name taken from one verse; and a nineteenth-century "manuscript" that vanished. How Deuteronomy reached us, and what is still debated.