Masoretic Deletions

The Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew Bible, is missing some passages that appear in older Hebrew copies, including the source behind the Greek Septuagint translation, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. These gaps can come from copying mistakes, from later scribes softening a difficult reading, or from rearranging the text over time. In such cases the Septuagint is not adding new material, but preserving an older Hebrew reading that the standard Hebrew text later lost.