In the MMT,
the term מעשי התירה clearly points to the halakhic regulations or teachings
mentioned before in part B. But it is a severe misinterpretation to limit the
term (in MMT and even more so in Paul) in mere precepts, as MMT strongly presupposes
that these teachings ought to be practiced by the addressee or the group he
represents. The focus is on doing “what is right and good before him,” i.e. on
the lawful works, so that the term should not be translated as “precepts of the
law”, as it is always implied that they are precepts that the law demands to be
obeyed. Paul likewise draws on ‘works’ that were apparently supposed to make a
human righteous (before God, in an eschatological judgment), so that also in
Paul it is implausible to limit these εργα to mere precepts or halakhot without
considering the practice of those precepts as well.
d) This is confirmed by the fact that, only four lines
later, the author phrases: “ . . . it will be reckoned to you as righteousness,
in that you have done what is right and good before him” (MMT viii 17-18
[C31-32]). Again, the author stresses “doing” what is right before God, and
this refers quite clearly to the “works of the law,” and precepts or halakhot
as presented before. The phrase “reckoned to one as righteousness” echoes the
MT of Psalm 106:31 (rather than Gen 15:6 where not the nif’al but the qal of חשב
is used). It can be assumed that the subject of such a ‘reckoning’ or the one
who can consider the addressee righteous (because of his practice of lawful
works) is God. The addressee will “rejoice in the end” if he has accepted the
teaching and practiced the works accordingly so that he will be considered
righteous. Here, righteousness occurs in a clearly eschatological framework in
which the human (here: the addressee) is judged by God, and the criterion of being
considered righteous is the teaching and practice of lawful works, based on the
adoption of the correct halakhic interpretation. (Jörg Frey, “Contextualizing Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’:
4QMMT in New Testament Scholarship,” in Interpreting and Living God’s Law at
Qumran: Miqṣat Ma’aśe
Ha-Torah Some of the Works of the Torah (4QMMT), ed. Reinhard G. Kratz [Scriptura
Antiquitatis Poserioris ad Ethicam Religionemque Pertinentía 37; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2020], 211)