Melchizedek in 11QMelch (aka 11Q13, 11QMelchizedek)

 As promised I am going to present the evidence found in 11Q13 with a few comments. All the Hebrew is from Martin Abegg's electronic text  (ver. 2.0) and the English translation is from Abegg, Wise and Cook.


11Q13 2:5‏ מוריהמה החבאוׄ וׄסתר[ו] ומנחלת מלכי צדק כי[א -- ] והמה נחל[ת מלכי צ]דק אשר
‎11Q13 2:8‏ לכפר בו על כול בני [אור ו]אנש[י ]גׄורל מל[כי ]צדק[ .  -- ]ם עלי[המ]ה הת[ ]לפ[י ]כ[ול עש]ותמה כיא
‎11Q13 2:9‏ הואה הקץ לשנת הרצון למלכי צדק ולצב[איו ע]ם קדושי אל לממשלת משפט כאשר כתוב
‎11Q13 2:13‏ ומלכי צדק יקום נקם משפטי א[ל ביום ההואה.  ויצי]ל[מה מיד ]בליעל ומיד כול ר[וחי גורלו]. 
‎11Q13 2:25‏ [ -- מלכי צדק אשר יצי]ל[מה מי]ד בליעל.  ואשר אמר והעברתמה שו[פר ב]כוׄל [א]רץ.
  — Martin Abegg

11Q13 2:8  when he shall atone for all the Sons of [Light] and the peopl[e who are pre]destined to Mel[chi]zedek. […] upo[n the]m […] For
11Q13 2:9  this is the time decreed for “the year of Melchiz[edek]’s favor” (Isaiah 61:2, modified), [and] by his might he w[i]ll judge God’s holy ones and so establish a righteous ki[n]gdom, as it is written
11Q13 2:13  Therefore Melchizedek will thoroughly prosecute the veng[ea]nce required by Go[d’s] statu[te]s. [Also, he will deliver all the captives from the power of B]elial, and from the power of all [the spirits predestined to him.]
11Q13 2:25  [Melchizedek, who will del]iv[er them from the po]wer of Belial. Concerning what scripture says, “Then you shall have the trumpet [sounded loud; in] the [seventh m]o[nth …” (Leviticus 25:9).]
  —  Abegg, Wise and Cook

Those who are not able to read Hebrew should still be able to make a note of  fragmentary nature of the evidence. The brackets represent holes or broken lines. In the Hebrew text only, all the letters inside the brackets are missing from the fragment, nothing there at all, not even a trace of a letter. The letters outside the brackets are present, at least some trace of a letter. What doesn't come across in the unicode script is the markings on letters outside the brackets that indicate a letter which is questionable. There are broken letters and also letters which are hard to read for other reasons. Any broken or ambiguous letter is less probable to be correctly read. I counted about forty letters which were marked with some level of uncertainty. If you to go to the trouble of counting the letters outside of brackets this will give you some feel for the magnitude of the problem involved in reading these fragments. These are just the mechanical problems with reading the fragments;  nothing to do with language, just extracting the "code" from the media is a major task fraught with difficulties and uncertainties. I have done quite a bit of this with Greek papyri and some in Hebrew/Aramaic.     

Here is the text again, all the uncertain letters are underlined.

11Q13 2:5‏ מוריהמה החבאוׄ וׄסתר[ו] ומנחלת מלכי צדק כי[א -- ] והמה נחל[ת מלכי צ]דק אשר
‎11Q13 2:8‏ לכפר בו על כול בני [אור ו]אנש[י ]גׄורל מל[כי ]צדק[ .  -- ]ם עלי[המ]ה הת[ ]לפ[י ]כ[ול עש]ותמה כיא
‎11Q13 2:9‏ הואה הקץ לשנת הרצון למלכי צדק ולצב[איו ע]ם קדושי אל לממשלת משפט כאשר כתוב
‎11Q13 2:13‏ ומלכי צדק יקום נקם משפטי א[ל ביום ההואה.  ויצי]ל[מה מיד ]בליעל ומיד כול ר[וחי גורלו]. 
‎11Q13 2:25‏ [ -- מלכי צדק אשר יצי]ל[מה מי]ד בליעל.  ואשר אמר והעברתמה שו[פר ב]כוׄל [א]רץ.
  — Martin Abegg

To really appreciate what it means to be an uncertain letter you need to see high quality images of the fragments. Editors are not all the same. Some are quite optimistic about their ability to read a mere dot of ink as a letter. I ran into a lot of this sort of thing in certain editions of the NT papyri but I haven't had the opportunity to evaluate the quality of this text which I assume came from the electronic version of the editio princeps.