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Q.
Dear friends, a Jewish friend told me that Christians have altered the meaning
Psalm 22:16. The verb “to pierce” is not present in that verse, he said, but the original text should be read: “like a lion my hands and my feet”--and the victim is not Jesus, but the people of Israel. He quoted several Hebrew dictionaries. He also rejected the other occurrences of the verb “to pierce” in ancient translations like LXX [or the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, or Tanakh], etc. because he says that they never use the word “to pierce.”
Could you please help me? Raphael* |
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In any case, the text simply doesn’t make sense when rendered “like a lion.” There are no prepositions or verbs in the phrase to connect it to “my hands and my feet”, thus it would read: “like a lion my hands and my feet.” This is meaningless. The translators who prefer to use “like a lion” fudge a little and render it “like a lion on my hands and my feet”, inserting a non-existent “on.” But this doesn’t work, because the word “on” is not in the Hebrew text. Moreover, what exactly would be the meaning of a lion on someone’s hands and feet? I can understand lions ravenous and roaring (v.13), and I can understand salvation from the lion’s mouth (v.21), but a lion being, well, “on” somebody? No real metaphoric meaning there. |
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When one looks at the text itself, the issue becomes obvious that “like a lion” was a later rendering to make the passage about something other than the crucifixion of Jesus. So, if we accept the earliest Jewish understanding of the text, as in the Septuagint, untainted by apologetic issues from either side, we must accept “pierced.” This also is the only translation that makes sense in the context. Y |
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