Protective Liturgies from Qumran

Layer

Full Word of God

Collection

3.7 Qumran — The Wilderness Library

Classification

Qumran witness

Relationship to Scripture

Closely related · not in the Restored Bible

Protective Liturgies from Qumran

[Archive witness: an ancient protective or ritual text, preserved as historical evidence — not doctrine, and not for practice.]

Among the scrolls are liturgies meant to guard the community from the spirits of harm in the age of wickedness. The chief of these is the Songs of the Sage, filed under its own number; here the protective character of this material is noted, with representative wording:

“And I, the Instructor, proclaim the majesty of his beauty, to terrify and confound all the spirits of the destroying angels, and the bastard spirits, the demons and the night-spirits, who fall upon men suddenly to lead the heart astray. [Line damaged]”

Blessed be the LORD;

the spirits of harm flee before his name,

and they have no power over the sons of light

in the age of the rule of wickedness.

[See the Songs of the Sage for the fuller text.]