By: Menachem
Here is a comparison of a Jewish Translation and a
Christian TranslationJewish Translation: Psalms 22:17 For dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers encompassed me, like a lion are my hands and my feet.
Christian Translation: Psalms 22:16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. (KJV)
The passage in Hebrew:
כִּי סְבָבוּנִי כְּלָבִים עֲדַת מְרֵעִים, הִקִּיפוּנִי כָּאֲרִי יָדַי וְרַגְלָי.The word that comes into question in this verse is the word K'ari
כארי meaning Like a Lion. The distinctive translations have been highlighted in the verses of both. So the question is which one is correct? This problem can easily be resolved by examining other texts and other instances in which the word K’ari show up in the Tanakh. Here the Preposition (Ka-
כ) the Hebrew equivalent to like/as is used to give the word (Ari-
ארי) a preposition and a reading as "Like a lion." Coming from the word Aryah(
אריה) meaning “lion.”The Hebrew word K'ari is found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) Numbers 23:24 (
כארי ) [and as a young Lion], Numbers24:9 (
כארי) [like a lion], Isaiah 38:13(
כארי) [like a lion], Ezekiel 22:25(
כארי) [like a lion] and Psalms 22:17[16] (
כארי) [They Pierced]. All of which are highlighted red are rendered correctly by the KJV translators the one that is blue is not rendered correctly.
With that being said lets now examine other textual witnesses to this particular Psalm.
Let’s look at the Aramaic Targum to Psalm 22:17 in the Aramaic first:
מטול ארום דאחזרו עלי רשיע סיעת חייבין דמתילין לכלביא סגיעי כינשת מבאישין אקפוני נכתין היך כאריא אידי ורגלי:
This translates as follows:
“Because the wicked have surrounded me, who are like many dogs, a gathering of evildoers have closed me in, biting like a lion my hands and my feet.”
The Targum of the Psalms bears witness to the accurate reading of the Psalm in Hebrew the Psalm actually reads “Like a Lion” here as it does in the Hebrew.
Now that we know the Targum Identifies with the Hebrew text lets now examine the Psalm version from Nechal Hever (DSS).
In the Hebrew of the Nechal Hever version of this psalm we find it to read:
עדת מרעים הקיפוני כארי ידיה ורגלי:
Many Christians want to read the word
כארי as if it read
כארו. The reason for this is because of the somewhat enlongated Yod(
י) that appears in the text and because they want the word “pierced” to appear there so bad they can taste it.. The only problem with this rendering is that they are rendering the word as a non-existent word. The word K’aru (
כארו) does not exist in the Hebrew language as a valid word. So there in lays the biggest problem of them all, a made up word that has the meaning of “pierced” assigned by Christians…hrm…not a very stable position to take on the subject matter.
The another Christian position on the word
כארי is that they maintain that the original word is the word Karu(
כרו). They base this claim off of the fraudulent claim that the Nechal hever psalms render it as K’aru and not K’ari. The only problem with this is that they hit a dead end with this claim as well. The term Karu(
כרו) means simply “to dig” as in “dig a ditch.” The term is not used anywhere in the Hebrew bible with any hint, connotation, nor even an inference that the word means “pierce.” It is always used to mean “to dig [a ditch].” In the Septuagint the reading is
ωρυξαν (oruksan), which stems from the root
ορύσσω (orusso) meaning “to dig” as in to dig a trench” this is rendered thus according to Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon Which does not list this particular word as meaning pierced.
Many Christian arguments that are usually not mentioned by your typical missionary but is good to know anyway would be the claim that in the Olden days of the Hebrew language sometimes an Aleph was added to a Hebrew word. This is true sometimes one was added to a word. Christian missionaries then proceed to claim that that is what happened to the word Karu(
כרו) in this particular instance. They claim that an Aleph(
א) was added to this word to produce the word K’aru(
כארו). That might hold up if you didn’t know Hebrew. There is no known occurrence of this ever happening to the word Karu in all of Jewish literature. While some words do show this happening to them it is erroneous to think that happened with this word especially when the only thing they present is an assumption that this has occurred.
The above given at Nechal hever also has a Peculiarity about it. The thing that is peculiar is the rendering of the word for “my hands.” In the Hebrew Tanakh the word for “my hands” is rendered as
ידי which is masculine in gender and in the first person. The one at Nechal Hever is rendered as
ידיה and is in the third person and is feminine in gender. Anyone who has a working knowledge of Hebrew that in most cases a “Heh” ending on a Plural noun makes it feminine in Gender. So a more accurate rendering of the Nechal Hever version in English would be:
“Like a Lion are her hands and my feet.”
Placing this Nechal Hever version to jesus would be a futile attempt since Christians would have to overcome the obstacles I listed above.
No one really knows why Christians choose to render this psalm incorrectly maybe they have this thing about proving jesus in the Tanakh. They try to render this word to mean pierced when it just doesn’t have this meaning. The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) uses several words for pierced those including "Khadar (
חדר)" in Ezekiel 21:19, "Nakav (
נקב)" in Hab 3:14, "palakh (
פלח)" in Job 16:13, and "ratza (
רצע)" Exodus 21:6. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that none of these words even resembles the term K'ari(
כארי)...So in conclusion I would like to give just a brief overview of what was discussed above. Above we discussed the various usages of the term K’ari (
כארי) and how it was incorrectly translated by the KJV and other Christian versions to try and fool the reader. We examined other textual witnesses such as the ancient Aramaic Targum to this Psalm to show that the reading of “Like a Lion” is the best and most accurate of the renderings.
We also examined the textual rendering of the Psalm found at Nechal Hever. We exposed its true rendering and why it is impossible for it to have this rendering as well as the attributation of this particular version to that of jesus. So now we can safely say that the Psalm does not say “pierced” but in fact says “like a lion.”
