Isaiah 9:6 and the Antiquity of the Masoretic Tradition

Today I was reading Isaiah 9:6 (Eng. v. 7) with some colleagues and came across a textual variant I had never noticed before.

5 וַיִּקְרָ֨א שְׁמ֜וֹ פֶּ֠לֶא 

יוֹעֵץ֙ אֵ֣ל גִּבּ֔וֹר אֲבִיעַ֖ד שַׂר־

שָׁלֽוֹם׃   6 לַם רַבָּה הַמִּשְׂרָ֜ה 

וּלְשָׁל֣וֹם אֵֽין־קֵ֗ץ 

and he is named Wonderful 

Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of 

Peace.  ⁷ His authority shall grow continually, 
and there shall be endless peace (NRSV)

In the Aleppo and Leningrad codices, the second letter of v. 6 is a final mem yielding לם רבה, whereas a Qere note in the margin (marked with קׄ) says to read למרבה as one word with a non-final mem.

Detail of Leningrad Codex. Photographer: Bruce E. Zuckerman.

My first instinct was to explain this away as a scribal error in the Aleppo codex I was reading from. This kind of confusion is common in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I noted that it most commonly occurs on the archaic ־מו prefix (meaning "them") rather than in the middle of a word. A little more digging showed that the Leningrad codex has the same exact peculiarity, so this is certainly no accidental innovation in these manuscripts. 

In 1QIsa-a, the scribe does not use a distinct form of final mem, but does leave a space between למ and רבה. It is worth noting that the scribe does not always write a distinct final form, as is evident in the second detail below from just a few lines above our verse. Thus, it appears that our scribe here likely read למ רבה as two words rather than one.

Details of 1QIsa-a. © The Israel Museum.

Looking at the Septuagint, Ziegler reconstructs the Greek text as:

καὶ καλεῖται τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος·

ἐγὼ γὰρ ἄξω εἰρήνην ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας, 

εἰρήνην καὶ ὑγίειαν αὐτῷ (some mss αυτων). 

^{(6) 7} μεγάλη ἡ ἀρχὴ αὐτοῦ, 

καὶ τῆς εἰρήνης αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅριον

and he is named Messenger of Great Counsel, 

for I will bring peace upon the rulers, 

peace and health to him (some mss them). 

⁷⁽⁶⁾  His sovereignty is great, 

and his peace has no boundary (NETS)

For our verse, the Greek translator--who often translates rather freely--is clearly struggling to make sense of a difficult text, reading something like:

אבי(א) עד שר(ים) שלום (שלום ובורי/בריאות?) למ(ו) רבה המשרה

The extra "peace and health to him" may have been added by the translator for some reason, or it could have been a Hebrew reading known to him or at least supposed by him. Note the similarity between a conjenctured retroversion like שלום שלום ובורי and שלום למו רבה. If so, the translation could perhaps reflect a double translation of the Hebrew representing two possible readings of the difficult Hebrew text before him. Either way, the translation αὐτῷ μεγάλη seems to imply a source text that read לם רבה as two separate words.

Thus, the final mem in the medieval Masoretic codices is no accident, but an accurate record of a textual variant that can be traced back to the 2nd century BCE in 1QIsa-a and the LXX! The inherited reading tradition preferred to read למרבה as one word (cf. the similar noun form in Isa 33:23), a tradition which can be traced at least as far back as the 2nd century CE (see Theodotion's translation τω πληθυνειν την παιδειαν; so also το εβρʹ λεμαρβη αμμισρα according to Chrysostum). But for over 1000 years, some (not all) Jewish scribes faithfully copied the alternative text with two words לם רבה inherited from their exemplars. This variant then gives us a remarkable window into the deep roots of the (sometimes multiple and conflicting) readings embedded in the traditional Masoretic text in one of the most famous passages in all of the Hebrew Bible.