Pesher Psalms A (4Q171) on Psalm 37

The scroll fragments were recovered from Qumran Cave 4 and assigned to one manuscript by common hand, material, layout, and the sequential quotations from Psalm 37. J. M. Allegro published the editio princeps, while later scholars corrected readings and refined joins. The Israel Antiquities Authority’s archive preserves exact-fragment photographs, and Qumran-Digital now provides a versioned transcription with biblical quotations identified. No ancient label calls the work ‘Pesher Psalms A’; the name describes its modern classification and distinguishes related commentary fragments. Provenance does not tell us who composed it, when the underlying interpretations arose, or whether the manuscript was produced at Qumran rather than brought there.

The object is a badly damaged leather scroll written in Hebrew. Portions of several columns survive, with blocks of quoted Psalm followed by interpretive prose. Blank spacing and introductory formulas help readers see where lemma ends and pesher begins, though physical loss sometimes obscures the boundary. Names such as the Teacher of Righteousness are titles, not personal names. Among the clearest themes are waiting for God, the short-lived prosperity of the wicked, the sword returning upon aggressors, the righteous inheriting the land, and deliverance from persecutors. Every edition contains reconstructions at torn margins; a continuous English rendering should not be mistaken for an intact manuscript page.

Palaeography places the manuscript in the Herodian period, broadly the late first century BC or early first century AD. The interpretations may be earlier than the surviving copy. Pesher literature is especially associated with the Qumran corpus and assumes that prophetic or poetic Scripture contains mysteries whose decisive referents have been revealed to an inspired interpreter. Psalm 37 itself is an alphabetic wisdom psalm about patience and divine justice rather than an explicit prediction of named Second Temple groups. 4Q171’s historical value lies in showing how one community reapplied that language. Its date cannot identify the Teacher or fix the chronology of conflicts only described through polemical titles.