4QInstruction

4QInstruction, or Sapiential Work A (Hebrew: Musar leMevin, מוסר למבין, "Instruction to a student"), is a document that is preserved in at least seven fragmentary manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls; these are 4Q415, 4Q416, 4Q417, 4Q418, 4Q418a, 4Q423, and 1Q26. Cave 1 materials were first published by Józef Milik in DJD 1 in 1955. Cave 4 materials were published in the Discoveries in the Judean Desert series in 1999 by John Strugnell and Daniel Harrington. The document is written in Hebrew, is likely to be categorized as "Non-Sectarian" or, perhaps, "Pre-Sectarian". There is some consensus that it dates to the third century BCE.

This document continues to receive so much attention because it is viewed, on the one hand, as a wisdom document and yet, on the other, has multiple apocalyptic motifs that arise alongside sapiential ones. Many major studies have asked questions about the relationship of wisdom to apocalypticism which has been part of a larger question about categorizing genres, schools and worldviews in Judaism in the Second Temple Period.