Does God Hate Divorce? Malachi 2:16

I recently heard an interesting discussion about the contested text and meaning of the (in)famous Malachi 2:16 reading that "God hates divorce," so I wanted to take a closer look. 

כִּֽי־שָׂנֵ֣א שַׁלַּ֗ח אָמַ֤ר יְהוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְכִסָּ֤ה חָמָס֙ עַל־לְבוּשׁ֔וֹ אָמַ֖ר יְהוָ֣ה צְבָא֑וֹת וְנִשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם בְּרוּחֲכֶ֖ם וְלֹ֥א תִבְגֹּֽדוּ׃

For I hate (Cn: Heb he hates) divorce, says the LORD, the God of Israel, and covering one’s garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless. (NRSV)

כִּֽי־שָׂנֵ֣א שַׁלַּ֗ח MT ] כי אם שנתה שלח DSS-4Q76 ἀλλὰ ἐὰν μισήσας ἐξαποστείλῃς LXX cum odio habueris dimite V אֲרֵי אִם סְנֵית/סְנֵיתָ/סני את) לַה פַטרַה) T | > S | prb l שׂנאתִי BHS.

In this case, the MT is somewhat unclear and ambiguous. The verb seems to be third person and could perhaps be read as "he hates divorcing" (with God as implied subject) or even "he hates (and) divorces" (with the faithless one as implied subject). But in the grammatical context, there is no obvious third person masculine antecedent. The faithless one is addressed in the second person in the previous verse, but if this clause is quoted divine speech ("says the LORD"), we would probably expect the first person if God were the subject.

Because of the awkwardness of the MT, some have emended to שׂנאתִי (with BHS) to smooth out the grammar, yielding "I hate divorcing" (with God as subject). Alternatively, others have read the verb as a participle with implied first person pronoun, yielding "(I) am hating divorcing," with similar meaning. The Syriac Peshitta apparently just omitted the whole problematic text, which probably attests to the difficulty already in antiquity, long before our earliest Masoretic manuscripts. 

A serious textual alternative comes from the common second person reading of 4Q76 (4QXIIa), the LXX, Vulgate, and Targum Jonathan. The Hebrew grammar of 4Q76 is still awkward, but the idea can perhaps be rendered roughly as "if you hate (her), divorcing (her)" or "if you hate (her), (and you) divorce (her)" (faithless as subject). The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible translates it, "For if you hate and divorce." The LXX and Vulgate understand the text in the same way, with both verbs understood as something the faithless one is doing. NETS reads, "But if, since you hate her, you should send her away." The Targum situation is a bit complicated by the lack of a good critical edition, but seems to support the second person tradition of reading. Of the three variants I noted from the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon entry and Safaria, סְנֵיתָ and סני את are unambiguously second person "you hate." The reading סְנֵית could potentially be read as "I hate" or "you hate," depending on the dialect (I'd have to look into the grammar of Targum Jonathan more closely).

The agreement of all of these witnesses against MT is indeed impressive, but I admit I am very skeptical. It is easy for me to see how the second person readings could arise as exegetical clarifications of a difficult, ambiguous text. But it is very difficult for me to imagine anyone creating the MT text from the second person readings. Omission of אם seems less likely than grammatical facilitation. The reading שנתה also reflects a common, non-etymological orthography that is highly suspect. I suppose א and ת were easily confused in the old Hebrew script, but I'm still dubious that the MT can be derived reasonably from the other reading. It is worth pointing out that the LXX also translates the awkward third person jussive in וּבְאֵ֥שֶׁת נְעוּרֶ֖יךָ אַל־יִבְגֹּֽד "and against the wife of your youth let him not deal treacherously" at the end of v. 15 with the second person ἐγκαταλίπῃς, showing that the problem of referent actually starts in v. 15 and is clarified throughout by the LXX. Similarly, BHQ reads "The difficulty perceived in M is its apparent inconsistency with the provision for divorce in Deut 24:1. 4QXIIa follows the same tradition of Jewish exegesis as reflected in T (so also G and V), while S adopts the simpler expedient of omission." It is worth pointing out that both T and V use imperatives meaning, "if you hate (her), divorce her!" I'm not really convinced of that reading, as I don't think it fits the context and the third person forms elsewhere in the verse. But perhaps this too could be a rhetorical challenge, more than a literal command to divorce the wives.

If we reject the second person "you hate" reading as exegetical, the question remains what to do with the earlier MT. As I see it now, it doesn't make much sense to render it with God as the subject, because the grammar of the third person self-reference would be highly awkward: "(God) hates divorcing, says the LORD". On the other hand, the third person reference to the faithless one as subject shows good continuation from v. 15 (where the faithless one is commanded indirectly in the third person not to betray his wife), and the collocation of the terms שנא and שלח are more naturally read as the normal process of despising and divorcing one's wife (cf. Deut 24:3, where the two terms are used in the same order). The real problem is why the final part of verse 15 וּבְאֵ֥שֶׁת נְעוּרֶ֖יךָ אַל־יִבְגֹּֽד shifts person reference mid-clause. But Mal 2:16 itself doesn't seem that problematic to me, even if grammatically a bit awkward.

So does God hate divorce? Probably... I can't imagine any divorce is ever completely untainted by at least one party's sin, even if it's the least bad option available. But does Mal 2:16 explicitly state that? Probably not, at least in an absolute sense. Whether we follow the MT or the second person interpretive reading, the exegetical tradition and most plausible reading of the text seems resoundingly in favor of interpreting this(/these) act(s) of hating and divorcing as something the unfaithful one is doing (or at least potentially doing). That said, if the unfaithful ones who divorce their wives are said to betray them and wrap themselves with violence, it still seems pretty clear that God is no fan of unjust divorce. 

Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible

Starting in just a few days, the Museum of the Bible will be hosting an exhibition in Washington, D.C., of the Dead Sea Scrolls in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority. The scrolls will be available in three different rotations:

NOVEMBER 22, 2025–FEBRUARY 2026

First Rotation

• 4Q7 Genesis(g)
• 11Q10 Targum Job
• 4Q83 Psalms(a)
• 4Q210 Astronomical Enoch(c)
• 4Q434 Barkhi Nafshi(a)
• 4Q491 War Scroll(a)
• Eschatological Commentary A
• 11Q20 Temple Scroll(b)

FEBRUARY–MAY 2026

Second Rotation

• 11Q5(a) Psalms (Great Psalms Scroll Fragments)
• 4Q27 Numbers(b)
• 4Q111 Lamentations
• 4Q264 Community Rule(j)
• 4Q448 Apocryphal Psalms and Prayer
• 4Q274 Tohorot A (Purities)
• 4Q400 Non-Canonical Psalms A
• 4Q530 Book of the Giants(b)

MAY–SEPTEMBER 2026

Third Rotation

• 4Q58 Isaiah(d)
• 4Q197 Tobit(b)
• 4Q130 Phylacteries C
• 4Q534 Birth of Noah(a)
• 4Q218 Jubilees(c)
• 4Q275 Communal Ceremony
• 4Q258 Community Rule(d)
• 4Q271 Damascus Document(f)

Radiocarbon Dating, AI, and Paleography

Mladen Popovic et al. have published their long-anticipated article from the ERC project at the University of Groningen entitled The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Digital Palaeography and Scribal Culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The article describes the process of extracting new radiocarbon dates from a selection of Dead Sea Scrolls, digitally extracting quantifiable features of their scripts, and building an automated date estimation system called "Enoch." Roughly 80% of the resulting estimates agree with traditional, qualitative paleographical datings, but the results of both the radiocarbon dating and Enoch predictions suggests that several manuscripts throughout the series may well have been earlier than commonly supposed. This research moves the field forward considerably by adding quantitative, computational tools to aid paleographers that are not dependent upon conventional models for script development. In many cases, these new tools support previous approaches by grounding them in more secure dates derived from scientific analysis of the material remains instead of the handwriting style. But the results sometimes challenge conventional wisdom and have potential to help refine our understanding of Hebrew script development in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Congratulations to everyone involved for a job well done and a significant contribution to the field!

For a popular-level news report on the publication, see Science.

*Disclaimer: I worked with Mladen et al. on the project for several years during the foundational stages of the research, but I was not a co-author for this academic article.

Craig Evans on the DSS-Like Fragments

Craig Evans recently posted a video interview suggesting that the post-2002 DSS-like fragments now generally supposed to be forgeries are in fact likely authentic. He bases this on reported claims by Weston Fields that these fragments really did come from the Kandos' vault and that the phenomena that are used to justify rejecting the authenticity of the fragments are common in genuine DSS. For those who are interested, here was my brief (spoiler: skeptical) response to his Facebook post.

Thanks for posting your thoughts on the topic. Surely no one will object to a closer examination of authentic DSS to provide comparanda, but someone would have to pay for it, and I wouldn't expect very positive results. In my own experience (and quickly double checking some of the better preserved scrolls), minor cracks and delamination are almost always secondary when they co-occur with ink. You can often see clearly how the ink cracks with the skin and leaves the lighter interior exposed. When layers of the skin separate, you can see that the ink on the surface flakes off with it, and you would be very hard pressed to find a compelling example (let alone multiple) where an ancient scribe wrote over such an already partially-delaminated surface. The better preserved scrolls demonstrate that the DSS were generally quite smooth when inscribed. When there were issues with the preparation of the skin (holes, cracks, or even rough patches), the scribes usually avoided writing over these spots. So I find it very unlikely that we would find such a high proportion of these sorts of irregularities in the contested fragments if an ancient writer was writing on the skin. And this is in addition to the observation that most of the DSS were not even written on the type of coarse-rubbery leather found in the contested fragments, but were rather stretched, dried, and carefully prepared for writing. The two types of skin preparation are so fundamentally different that I cannot believe most of the contested fragments were ever intended for writing in the first place. So I don’t think this speculation really explains the suspicious phenomena in the contested fragments or warrants further speculations about hypothetical purity rituals. Add to that the many suspicious paleographic and textual features that have been noted, and I think you will have a very hard time convincing many specialists of the authenticity of most of the contested fragments today.

Update 11 Feb 2023

Stephen Goranson informed me of a video response posted by Kipp Davis.

A New Identification of a Psalm Manuscript from Qumran: 4Q85 + 4Q98c

I just got news that an article I co-authored with Brent Strawn has now been published as an advance article in Dead Sea Discoveries:

Drew Longacre and Brent Strawn, "A New Identification of a Psalm Manuscript from Qumran: 4Q85 + 4Q98c." DSD Advanced Articles (2022): 1-8.

Abstract

This brief note proposes a new identification for a fragment of one of the Psalm manuscripts from Qumran. On the basis of material conditions—but above all else, the distinctive paleography of the script—4Q98c (4QP st) should be considered as part of the same manuscript known as 4Q85 (4QP sc). If this identification is correct, the latter now contains material known from the second half of the (proto-)MT Psalter, increasing the plausibility that it once contained the entire book of Psalms.

Online Qumran Lexicon

The Qumran Digital project of the University of Göttingen has made available an online version of the texts and entries for the Qumran Wörterbuch.

Brent Nongbri on the Vatican DSS Fragments

Brent Nongbri has a brief note with images on the two Vatican Museum Dead Sea Scroll fragments. I must admit that I too was surprised to see them when I first noticed them in the Vatican Museum years ago. Trying to examine them upside down in poor lighting while resisting a torrent of people wasn't very successful at the time. :)

Paleographic Style and the Forms and Functions of the Dead Sea Psalm Scrolls

My article on the style and function of the Dead Sea Psalm scrolls has now been published as an advance article! By way of background, this is a crucial part of my argument that the forms of the manuscripts suggest possible functions, which in turn helps us interpret their contents.

Drew Longacre, "Paleographic Style and the Forms and Functions of the Dead Sea Psalm Scrolls: A Hand Fitting for the Occasion?" Vetus Testamentum (2021): 1-26.

University of Pretoria Dead Sea Scrolls Conference Recordings

The University of Pretoria's International Dead Sea Scrolls conference recordings have now been uploaded for online viewing. They include several presentations relevant for OTTC.

New Dead Sea Scroll Fragments

Haaretz, the New York Times, and the AP (among others) report on some new Greek Minor Prophets fragments from the Nahal Ḥever Cave of Horrors, including a few nice images. Presumably these are from the same scroll as the famous Kaige Greek Minor Prophets scroll.

Haaretz on Scroll Reconstruction

Ruth Schuster has just published an interesting article in Haaretz highlighting the recent article by Ratzon and Dershowitz on scroll length reconstruction, complete with some responses by yours truly.

Elisha Qimron's "The Qumran Texts: Composite Edition"

Elisha Qimron has uploaded his three-volume The Qumran Texts: Composite Edition on Zenodo. Qimron has done much important work on giving his own readings of these texts, and this is no doubt a valuable contribution.

Text & Canon Institute Videos

Phoenix Seminary's Text & Canon Institute has uploaded video recordings of two lectures on the history of the OT text. These are aimed at a popular audience, but it is nice to see the speakers' take on the issues.

Peter Gentry, Chaos Theory and the Text of the Old Testament

Anthony Ferguson, Listening to the Dead Sea Scrolls

Loll et al. 2019 - Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Collection Scientific Research and Analysis: Final Report

The Museum of the Bible has posted the well-illustrated final report of Colette Loll et al., which concluded unanimously that all of the MOTB DSS-like fragments were modern forgeries. This confirms the suspicions of many researchers, offering considerable new material evidence to the discussion.
Most prominently, all of the inscribed fragments have irregularities with the ink, such as:

1. Ink on top of delaminated skin, where the top layer of the skin has flaked off.
2. Ink flowing down the edges of fragments and into cracks.
3. Ink on top of accrued mineral deposits.
4. Ink "feathering" or bleeding outside the boundaries of the letters.

The report also confirms the observations of others that the letters often follow the contours of the broken edges and cracks of the fragments. Another noteworthy oddity is that some of the fragments seem to have been ruled with a greasy white substance before inscription. 

The writing surfaces also seem inconsistent with genuine DSS. All but one (MOTB.SCR.004742 [Leviticus]) are written on leather, characterized by: interwoven collagen fibers; a thick, spongy texture (now brittle); flexibility and resilience (again, now brittle); bumpy surface from the grain and fibrous surface on the skin side; and the absorption of tannins through the entire skin as part of the preparation process. In contrast, genuine scrolls are (almost?) always written on parchment, characterized by: parallel aligned collagen fibers; thin, relatively stiff texture; smooth surfaces due to scraping; and sometimes a surface treatment with tannins.

The leather was apparently soaked in a lime solution to help remove the hair, a technology which is supposed to have been introduced in the 4th cent. CE. This is interesting, since one questionable Azusa Pacific University fragment is said to have been radiocarbon dated to the 1st cent. CE, and it would be easy to explain how the forger got access to similar material from this time. The report suggests that several holes in certain fragments may have been human-created and resemble leather used for Roman shoes, so the leather may have originally been created for a similar usage. Heavy mineral deposits on the surfaces (including under the ink) suggests that the leather was recovered from an ancient archeological context, though it cannot be dated precisely.

The report gives a detailed analysis of the material of the leather and sediments. On each of the fragments there was an amber-colored protein coating (probably animal skin glue), but it is not clear whether this was part of the preparation of the parchment or natural gelatinization. The report notes suspicious striations on one fragment resulting from brush strokes, which apparently applied a transparent substance to the surface. The ink is carbon-based and uses gum Arabic as a binder; the team apparently did not detect any egg-white, unlike the ink in the Schøyen ink well. The report also suggests that someone deposited a layer of sediment consistent with the Dead Sea region on the surface of the fragments, possibly while the ink was still wet.

Though I am no expert on the material side, and there are some material problems with the leather, it seems clear that the irregularities of the ink are the primary indicators for the team's decision. To quote a helpful and succinct summary:

"Aside from unambiguous conservation materials, no anachronistic or anomalous materials were identified in the studied fragments. The state of degradation and minerology of the parchment samples suggests they may old or ancient, however, physical clues, such as the application of ink over delaminated support material and sediment, as well as cracks in several fragments, suggests that much or all of the ink may have been applied more recently (111)."

Indeed, the fact that the ink and script are so problematic for each of the fragments is a strong indication that all of these fragments are modern forgeries on ancient skins.

____________________________________________________________

See also the discussions by Christopher Rollston, Sidnie Crawford, and Michael Langlois. Contrast the following statement by Emanuel Tov cited in a National Geographic article:

"I will not say that there are no unauthentic fragments among the MOB fragments, but in my view, their inauthenticity as a whole has still not been proven beyond doubt. This doubt is due to the fact that similar testing has not been done on undisputed Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts in order to provide a base line for comparison, including the fragments from the Judean Desert sites that are later than Qumran. The report expects us to conclude that abnormalities abound without demonstrating what is normal."

While I agree that it would be helpful to do similar tests with authentic DSS for comparison, the combined evidence with regard to the MOTB DSS-like fragments collected to date does seem to me to be quite compelling. These fragments are almost certainly modern forgeries.

National Geographic on MOTB DSS-Like Forgeries

Michael Greshko writes an interesting piece for National Geographic on the new report about the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll-like fragments: Exclusive: 'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries.

HT Michael Langlois

Dhali et al. 2020 - Feature-extraction methods for historical manuscript dating based on writing style development

Maruf Dhali et al. from the Groningen ERC team just published a paper on the use of digital feature-extraction methods for dating Dead Sea Scrolls.

Maruf A. Dhali et al., “Feature-Extraction Methods for Historical Manuscript Dating Based on Writing Style Development,” Pattern Recognition Letters 131 (2020): 413–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2020.01.027.

Highlights

•

Proposes feature-extraction techniques for dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS).

•

A grapheme-based method with a self-organized time map outperforms textural methods.

•

A codebook size of 225 performs the best with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 23.4 years.

•

Cumulative Score (α = 25) improves with an increase in the sub-codebook size.

•

The result is positioned as a basic benchmark for further work on dating for the DSS.

Abstract

Paleographers and philologists perform significant research in finding the dates of ancient manuscripts to understand the historical contexts. To estimate these dates, the traditional process of using classical paleography is subjective, tedious, and often time-consuming. An automatic system based on pattern recognition techniques that infers these dates would be a valuable tool for scholars. In this study, the development of handwriting styles over time in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of ancient manuscripts, is used to create a model that predicts the date of a query manuscript. In order to extract the handwriting styles, several dedicated feature-extraction techniques have been explored. Additionally, a self-organizing time map is used as a codebook. Support vector regression is used to estimate a date based on the feature vector of a manuscript. The date estimation from grapheme-based technique outperforms other feature-extraction techniques in identifying the chronological style development of handwriting in this study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

New Book on the Samaritan Pentateuch

Peeters is announcing a new book edited by Michael Langlois The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

From the website:

Summary:
Seventy years after their discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls continue to shed light on the Samaritan Pentateuch. The textual features, orthography, script, variant readings and even theology of the Samaritan Pentateuch have parallels in various manuscripts found in the Judaean desert and copied during the Second Temple period. The fertile encounter of Samaritan and Dead Sea Scrolls studies has yielded this exceptional volume, featuring twelve contributions by some of the most respected scholars gathered at the University of Strasbourg on May 26–27, 2016. They cover such issues as scribal and editorial practices, political and religious history, textual editions and versions, palaeography and linguistics—with provocative studies challenging classical theories on the origin of the Gerizim tenth commandment or the date of the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Magnar KartveitScholars’ Assessments of the Relationship between the Pre-SamaritanTextsandtheSamaritanPentateuch................. 1
Emanuel tovFrom Popular Jewish LXX-SP Texts to Separate Sectarian Texts: InsightsfromtheDeadSeaScrolls................. 19
Michaël N. van der MeerExclusion and Expansion: Harmonisations in the Samaritan Penta- teuch, Pre-Samaritan Pentateuchal Manuscripts and Non-Pentateuchal Manuscripts............................. 41
Stefan SchorchThe So-Called Gerizim Commandment in the Samaritan Pentateuch 77
Gary N. KnopperS †Altared States: The Altar Laws in the Samaritan and Jewish Penta- teuchs,andTheirEarlyInterpreters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Benjamin ZieMerA Stemma for Deuteronomy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Innocent hiMbaZaLooking at the Samaritan Pentateuch from Qumran: Legal MaterialofLeviticusandDeuteronomy ................... 199
Jonathan ben-dovText Duplications between Higher and Lower Criticism: Num 20-21andDeut2-3............................. 217
Abraham talDo the Samaritan Pentateuch and 1QIsaa Follow the Same Model? 243
Michael langloiSDead Sea Scrolls Palaeography and the Samaritan Pentateuch . . 255

X table of contentS
Christian StadelVariegation in Second Temple Period Hebrew: Passive t-Stems, the
in Samaritan Hebrew and in theאפואDemonstrative Series, andהלזDeadSeaScrolls........................... 287
Jan JooStenBiblical Interpretation in the Samareitikon as Exemplified in Anony-mousReadingsinLeviticusAttestedinM′. . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

HT Agade

National Geographic Bible Hunters

National Geographic has posted an article Inside the cloak-and-dagger search for sacred texts. While much of it will be familiar to those following the field, the article contains numerous interesting interviews and is a good survey of important developments.

HT Peter Head

Kipp Davis on Forged Dead Sea Scrolls

Kipp Davis gives brief reflections on his work on modern Dead Sea Scrolls-like forgeries. He rehearses some of the evidence that led him to conclude that at least some of the fragments in private collections are forgeries, as well as providing cautious warnings about overzealous antiquities collectors in a market supplied by opportunists. For my own thoughts on probable modern forgeries, see my review of the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls volume.

New Sales of DSS

Owen Jarus has a new article on recently sold DSS-like fragments that will be of interest to readers. There is also an interesting picture gallery of DSS in the US.

HT Peter Gurry