Reverence For the Word of God

When Jewish scribes copied the Old Testament Scriptures, they had to be extremely meticulous, have three people double check everything to ensure accuracy, and throw out copies that had errors.

1. They could only use clean animal skins, prepared by a Jew only, and be fastened by strings from clean animals.
2. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.
3. The ink must be black, and prepared according to a special recipe.
4. No word nor letter could be written from memory; the scribe must have an authentic copy before him, and they must verbalize each word aloud while they were writing.
5. They must reverently wipe the pen each time before writing the Word of God, and wash their entire bodies before writing the sacred name of the Lord, the tetragrammaton, the capitalized LORD in our Bibles.
6. There must be a review within thirty days; one mistake on a sheet condemned the sheet, three mistakes found on any page condemned the entire manuscript.
7. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document was condemned and destroyed at once if a letter was omitted, an extra letter inserted, or if one letter touched another. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.

The reason they had to be so meticulous?

In Deuteronomy 6:4, if someone should change D to R, it would read "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is a false Lord" instead of "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord."

In Exodus 34:14, if someone should change R to D, it would read "You shall not worship the one true God" instead of "You shall not worship any other god."

In Leviticus 22:32, if someone should change CH to H, it would read, "Neither shall you praise My holy name" instead of "Neither shall you profane My holy name."

In Psalm 150:6, if someone should change H to CH, it would read "Let everything that has breath profane the Lord" instead of "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord."

In Jeremiah 5:12, if someone should change B to K, it would read "They have lied like the Lord" instead of "They have lied about the Lord."

In 1 Samuel 2:2, if someone should change K to B, it would read "There is no holiness in the Lord" instead of "There is no one holy like the Lord."