Psalms 22:16

A fresh description of his foes. An unclean, cowardly, worrying rabble, like the troops of hungry and half-savage dogs with which every oriental city and village still abounds (Tristram, Nat. Hist. p. 79), come thronging round him: a gang of miscreants have hemmed him in.

They pierced my hands and my feet The figure of the savage dogs is still continued. They fly at his feet and hands, and maim them.

The A.V. here rightly deserts the Massoretic text in favour of the reading represented by the LXX, Vulg., and Syr., which have, they dug, or, pierced. Another group of ancient Versions (Aq. Symm. Jer.) gives they bound. (Fixeruntin some editions of Jerome is a corruption for the true reading vinxerunt.) The Massoretic text has, like a lion my hands and my feet. A verb did they manglemust be supplied, but the construction is harsh and the sense unsatisfactory. It seems certain that a somewhat rare verb form כארו (kâ"ărû), -they pierced," has been corrupted into the similar word כארי (kâ"ărî), -like a lion." The Targum perhaps preserves a trace of the transition in its conflate rendering, biting like a lion.

The literal fulfilment in the Crucifixion is obvious. But it is nowhere referred to in the N.T.