or repeats phrases with variation rather than identically (e.g., 4:9 [12]), in themselves these features cannot be assumed to indicate that MT is not original. My working rule for the commentary, then, is to be rather stringent over accepting a reading other than MT as likely to represent the text as it was at an earlier stage in the Hebrew tradition that underlies MT. This implies a practice that is not as conservative as that in UBS, which invariably advises us to retain MT, but is more conservative