"They have pierced my hands and my feet", or "They pierced my hands and my feet" is a phrase that occurs in some English translations of (Psalm 21:17 in the Greek

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond ...

and Latin

Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...

; Psalm 22:16

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

). The text of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Hebrew verse numbering, reads in most versions of the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...

as: כארי ידי ורגלי, which may be read literally as "like a lion my hands and my feet". The full verse of the Masoretic Text reads: (''Kî sĕḇāḇûnî kĕlāḇîm 'ăḏaṯ mĕrē'îm hiqqîpûnî kā'ărî yāḏay wĕraglāy''). The syntactical form of this Hebrew phrase appears to be lacking a verb. In this context the phrase was commonly explained in early Rabbinical paraphrases as "they bite like a lion my hands and my feet". The

, a Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into

Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

made before the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the o ...

and subsequently Christianized, has "ὤρυξαν χεῗράς μου καὶ πόδας" ("they dug my hands and feet"), which Christian commentators argue could be understood in the general sense as "pierced". This reading was retained by

Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is co ...

in his translation from the Greek Hexapla into the Latin of his Gallican Psalter (''Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos'') which was incorporated into both the Vulgate and the Divine Office. The oldest surviving manuscript of the psalm comes from the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

, first discovered in 1947. Significantly, the 5/6 H. ev–Sev4Ps Fragment 11 of Psalm 22 contains the crucial word in the form of what some have suggested may be a third person plural verb, written כארו (“pierced/dug”). This may suggest that the Septuagint translation preserved the meaning of the original Hebrew. This rendering is present in a minority of manuscripts of the Masoretic text. Aquila of Sinope, a 2nd-century CE Greek convert to Christianity and later to

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...

, undertook two translations of the Psalms from Hebrew to Greek. In the first, he renders the verse "they disfigured my hands and feet"; in the second he revised this to "they have bound my hands and feet". The Jewish Publication Society translates the phrase as "Like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet".

English translations

Some English language translations, primarily those translated by or for Christian communities, render the text as: "They have pierced my hands and my feet" although English translations are not uniform in this rendering. Versions translated outside of Christian circles, such as the Jewish Publication Society and The Judaica Press, use different English renderings based on the Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint or Dead Sea Scrolls. The Vespasian Psalms use ''dulfun'', the preterite form of the Old English strong verb ''delfan'' (to dig). Wycliffe's Bible of 1395 uses ''delueden'', an alternate spelling of "delveden", the preterite form of the Middle English weak verb ''delven''. Modern English uses the late Middle English form, "delve". The archaic meaning of "delved" is to dig or excavate, a literal translation of the Latin Vulgate term ''foderunt'' (from Jerome's Hexaplar Psalms), from ''fodio'', I dig. Miles Coverdale in 1535, likely influenced by Luther's German translation as ''durchgraben'' (dig through, penetrate), chooses ''pearsed'' (pierced); and this has been retained in the majority of subsequent English versions. The translation of the New International Version as "they pierce my hands and feet" is based on the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Explanations and interpretations

Rashi Shlomo Yitzchaki ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compre ...

follows the

and paraphrases the phrase as "like lions (they maul) my hands and my feet." Rashi bases his translation of Psalm 22:16/17 on the other uses of the phrase (כָּ אֲרִי) ''ka'ari'' throughout the biblical text. Rashi cites Isaiah 38:13, in which translators uniformly render כָּאֲרִי as “like/as a lion”. The Masoretic Text points כָּאֲרִי as a phrase: the prefix כָּ denotes "like" or "as", and ארי "lion". A variant form of the word for lion ( אריה ) ''arie'' occurs twice in Psalm 22, in verses 13/14 and 21/22. To explain how divergent translations from the biblical text came about, Gregory Vall, a Christian professor of Religious Studies at

Trinity Western University , mottoeng = A Mighty Fortress Is Our God , established = Trinity Junior College (1962–1972), Trinity Western College (1972–1985), Trinity Western University (1986–present) , type = Privat ...

, speculated that the Septuagint translators were faced with כארו; i.e. as in the Masoretic text, but ending with the longer letter ''vav'' (ו) rather than the shorter ''yod'' (י), giving כארו ''ka'aru''. This is not a word in the Hebrew language, but without the aleph it becomes כרו, "dug", "mined", or "excavated". Biblical and Hebrew scholars, such as Brent Strawn, support the Masoretic Text reading of כארי ("like a lion"), based on textual analysis (i.e. derivatives of the word "lion" appear numerous times in the psalm and are a common metaphor in the Hebrew Bible), as well as its appearance in virtually every ancient Hebrew manuscript. An exception to this is a Psalms fragment from

Nahal Hever Nahal Hever ( he, נחל חבר) or Wadi al-Khabat (Arabic) is an intermittent stream (wadi) in the Judean Desert, that flows through the West Bank and Israel, from the area of Yatta to the Dead Sea. The Hebrew name is derived from "Hevron", the ...

, where the word in question is written as כארו, ''karu'', which becomes "dug" when omitting the aleph, as Vall had previously speculated. This finding is called into question by the Nahal Hever scribe's other numerous misspellings, such as one in the very same sentence, where ידיה is written instead of the correct ידי, making the Hebrew word ידי ''yadai'' "my hands" into ידיה ''yadeha'', “her hands". In

Peter Craigie Peter Campbell Craigie (18 August 1938 – 26 September 1985) was a British biblical scholar. Craigie was born in Lancaster and grew up in Edinburgh.Lyle Eslinger, "Peter C. Craigie," in Walter A. Elwell and J. D. Weaver (eds.) ''Bible Interp ...

's view, "MT’s כָּאֲרִי ('like a lion') presents numerous problems and can scarcely be correct." Reading the consonantal text כארו or כרו, he says that the Septuagint “they pierced my hands and feet” (ὤρυξαν) "may perhaps presuppose a verb כרה, 'to dig,' or כור, 'to pierce, bore'." Craigie notes alternative possibilities for the verb אָרָה (“to pluck, pick clean”), or כרה, “to be shrunken, shriveled”, but follows E. J. Kissane's proposal of an original text כלו, “consumed”, changed to כרו (noting the occasional interchange of ל and ר), with the nuance "my hands and my feet were exhausted". Gregory Vall proposes that the text originally read אסרו (’asaru), which means “they have bound” before ס and א got inadvertently swapped, resulting in the meaningless סארו, which was later changed into כארי (''ka'aru''); this could explain why Aquila of Sinope, Symmachus, and

all translated it the word as “to bind”. The translation "they have pierced" is preferred by many Christian commentators for its

christological In Christianity, Christology (from the Greek grc, Χριστός, Khristós, label=none and grc, -λογία, -logia, label=none), translated literally from Greek as "the study of Christ", is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Di ...

implications. For example,

Craig Blomberg Craig L. Blomberg (born August 3, 1955) is an American New Testament scholar. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of the New Testament at Denver Seminary in Colorado where he has been since 1986. His area of academic expertise is the New ...

, commenting on the allusions to

Psalm 22 Psalm 22 of the Book of Psalms (the hind of the dawn) or My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? is a psalm in the Bible. The Book of Psalms is part of the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and a book of the Christian Old Testament. In the ...

in the

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and form ...

, includes "he is surrounded by wicked onlookers (22:16a) who pierce his hands and feet (22:16b)" among "an astonishing number of close parallels to the events of Jesus' crucifixion". However, the phrase is not quoted directly in the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...

, despite the Septuagint Greek reading "dug" that might be thought to prefigure the piercing of Jesus' hands and feet. This translation is brimming with problems, not least of which is that there is no such Hebrew root as כאר and there is not a single instance of aleph being used as an infix in the Hebrew language, thus the form כארו is completely meaningless in Hebrew. The form as presented in the Masoretic Text, i.e. כארי, however, is perfect grammatical Hebrew for "like a lion" or "as a lion."Tim Hegg. ''Studies in the Biblical Text: Psalm 22:16 - 'like a lion' or 'they pierced'?'' (2021); online: https://tr-pdf.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/articles/psalm-22-16-like-a-lion-or-they-pierced.pdf.

References

{{reflist Biblical phrases Christianity and Judaism related controversies Crucifixion of Jesus Old Testament theology Psalms Septuagint words and phrases