This is a fine example of a Masoretic Bible. “Masorah” means “tradition,” in this case the tradition of how the biblical text is pointed (with vowels) and therefore read. During the manuscript age, copying errors from one text to its copy were quite common, and students of the text lived with this fact. But the books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) were considered to be divine communication, and so such errors—which might change the meaning of the text—were intolerable. To “freeze” the text in its correct form, attention was paid to the rarer words and forms in the biblical text, with the assumption that careful attention would preserve the text in its correct form. The notations surrounding the biblical text—in the margins, at the top of the page and at its bottom—provide the record of these rare forms and where else in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) they might be found. 

In addition to its Masoretic notes, this Tanakh illustrates the glories of a characteristically Jewish scribal art form—micrography (miniature writing). In micrography, the scribe uses Hebrew texts—often scriptural verses—and very fine writing to create decorative patterns and often images. 

This page offers a magnificent example of micrography, creating a border in which tiny letters formed into woven patterns become art. The central text—the “Song at the Sea” (Exodus 15), the great poem recited by the people of Israel after they had passed through the Red Sea—is highlighted by several features created by the scribe: the micrographic border, along with the fact that, unlike most of this Tanakh, the text is rendered in a single block, not three columns.