Psalm 22:17: Evidence from the Talmud for a Traditional Rendering

In a previous post, I reproduced Chris Heard’s summary of the argument of J. J. M. Roberts to the effect that none of the established roots of כרה - I: ‘dig [a pit], dig open [ears]; II: ‘get by trade, purchase’; and III: ‘give a feast’ in the standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, etc.) make sense in the context. Thus, Roberts “discovers” another כרה, כרה V on his reckoning, based on an Akkadian cognate. In this post, I present evidence from Aramaic and Akkadian that supports the plausibility of allowing for the possibility that כרה I in Hebrew might also mean ‘cut through, pierce,’ a sense which fits in Ps 22 with ‘dogs’ or ‘lion’ as subject. I also provide a (partial!) bibliography of articles on the issue at hand.

One of the great publishing events in the field of Northwest Semitic languages is the series of Aramaic dictionaries being published jointly by the Bar Ilan and Johns Hopkins University Presses (details below). No one working in the field of Aramaic literature or comparative philology can do without them. Without a doubt, they supersede previous efforts at producing dictionaries of the Talmud, Midrash, and the Targumim.

You have to be weird to do what I do, but there it is: I have a sort of combined dictionary of ancient Hebrew in progress among my files that melds information from eight Hebrew lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH, etc.: see my Hebrew dictionary post). There is hardly an entry that will not eventually contain information culled from the Bar Ilan dictionaries. They are that important. They are goldmines of information.

The Aramaic cognate of כרה I is כרי. Now, כרה in ancient Hebrew is securely attested with the meaning of ‘to dig (a pit, well, grave)’ (see any dictionary). In Babylonian Aramaic, as Sokoloff shows, כרי is securely attested with the meanings 1. to dig (a pit, well. canal); 2. to dredge (a canal); 3. to breach, pierce (foliage serving as a fence ). With respect to meaning 3, the example Sokoloff gives is the following:

חזי(א)<ה> לההוא גברא דהוה קא כארי בהוצי

He saw a certain man who was making a breach in a fence of palm leaves Tan 24a (17; L)

Sokoloff also adduces Mandaic סיפא כאריא ‘the sword pierces’ (Mandaic is another Aramaic dialect). Note the added א in both examples. An added א of the same sort is presupposed by ancient versions and scholars alike who read כארי/ו in Ps 22:17 as equivalent to כרו. The addition of א in this sort of phonological context is frequent in a number of Aramaic dialects. It occurs in biblical Hebrew as transmitted to us – ex hypothesi, in Ps 22;17 - but not so commonly.

The L in Sokoloff’s citation refers to London BL Harley 5508 (400). Other manuscripts containing the relevant tractate have a somewhat different text. What is abnormally interesting, as Duane Smith would say, is that in place of כרי, another verb is found:

חזייה לההוא גוברא דהוה בדיק בהוצא למחזה בברתיה

He saw a certain man who was making a breach in a fence of palm leaves to look at his daughter Tan 24a (17)

I realize people will now run off to see what the Talmud says about this certain man. That’s good. Talmud Torah is good, but make sure you read Rashi's commentary, and others, in order to understand it better. Back to the subject at hand.

As Sokoloff notes, Aramaic בדק II found in this passage is cognate to batāqu in Akkadian. That’s interesting in its own right, because it turns out that Akkadian batāqu, Aramaic כרי I, and Hebrew כרה I have related semantic ranges. According to CDA, G batāqu means:

    1. ‘cut off’ (parts of body, garments, land)  - that is also the primary meaning in the D stem: ‘cut off’     (trees) and ‘cut’ (ropes) are also attested; 2. transf. ‘deduct, drop price’ -but only in Old Assyrian; 3. ‘cut     through, pierce’ (a dyke, etc.).

It would be a mistake to assume that Akkadian batāqu, Aramaic כרי I, and Hebrew כרה I are absolute synonyms. It can be taken for granted that they were not. Still, the fact that Aramaic כרי I ranges in meaning from ‘dig’ a well, ‘cut through’ a barrier, and ‘pierce’ with a sword, and Akkadian batāqu ranges in meaning from ‘cut off’ body parts to ‘cut through’ a barrier, makes it plausible to suggest that Hebrew כרה I may also have ranged in meaning from ‘dig’ a well to ‘pierce,’ or perhaps even as far afield as ‘cut off’ body parts.

In light of the above, this is how I would propose to translate Ps 22:17 (reading כארו in place of MT כארי):

כִּי סְבָבוּנִי כְּלָבִים

עֲדַת מְרֵעִים הִקִּיפוּנִי

כָּאֲרוּ יָדַי וְרַגְלָי

16    For dogs have surrounded me;

a gang of evil-doers has encircled me;

they pierced¹1 my hands and my feet.

¹ 22:16 I.e., with their teeth; so with LXX, Syr., DSS XHev/Se4, and some medieval mss.; The MT reads Like a lion

 But wait: ‘pierced’ is exactly what we find in KJV, RSV, ESV, NASB, HCSB, TNIV, and ISV. A traditional rendering indeed. NJB ‘hack[ed] off’ is not dissimilar.

A few additional remarks before concluding. Peter Craigie also averred – before he went on to support a conjectural emendation – that it seems best to read כארו or כרו in Ps 22;17. He refers the interested reader to a discussion of the medieval manuscript evidence in favor of this reading found in De-Rossi, IV, 14–20.

As noted in ISV’s apparatus, XHev/Se4 also reads כארו, but as Kirsten Swenson points out (640, n. 12), it is not easy to verify that Peter Flint’s reading כארו rather than כארי is attested by the manuscript. Yodh and waw are often hard to distinguish in manuscripts of the period.

Craigie also notes that LXX’s translation ‘they pierced my hands and feet’ (ὤρυξαν), would appear to presuppose a verb כרה, ‘to dig,’ or כור (II), ‘to pierce, bore.’ But he also remarks that a כור II in Hebrew is dubious. It can safely be set aside.

Aquila’s second edition (ἐπέδησαν), Symmachus (ὡς ζητοῦντες δῆσαι), and Jerome (vinxerunt) appear to have read כארו and assigned it the meaning of ‘bind, tie.’ That translation is difficult to account for. It is as if אסרו ‘bind’ were read. A conjectural emendation to that effect has occasionally been proposed. Or might one reach for an Arabic cognate in order to suggest that כארו means such (for a valiant defense of this hypothesis, see Vall’s recent article). Aquila’s first edition had ἥσχυναν; in that case, כארו would seem to have been interpreted in light of Aramaic כאר = כער ‘soil, mar.’ 

A final possibility is that originally, the text read כארי כרו ‘like a lion they pierced.’ On this hypothesis, כרו would have dropped out via homoteleuton. ֡I cotton to this hypothesis, though it is hard to defend, since it is not very good method to propose a conjecture when in fact an attested variant, plain כארו, is not improbable. Still, the assumption that כארו, which is not well-attested in the Hebrew trasmission traditon = כרו, is bothering. Though Bob MacDonald is right that mention of a lion in Ps 22:17 is unnecessary, even superfluous, poets don’t always write according to our standards of judgment.

It would be splendid if one were to find a text in Akkadian in which batāqu and kīma nēši ‘like a lion’ or the like co-occur, preferably with some body part as the object complement. I would not give over my hands and feet to be mauled by animals to have the whole corpus of Akkadian literature searchable online. But I would love to see a foundation or university department take it upon themselves to do it. Would Martha Roth oversee it if someone gave her the money to make it happen? Heck, I would do cartwheels in a kilt in front of Bill Gates if I thought that would convince him to ante up for the project.

Bar Ilan Dictionaries Bibliography

Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Second edition; Dictionaries of the Talmud, Midrash and Targum 2; Publications of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project; Ramat-Gan / Baltimore: Bar Ilan University Press / Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002 [1990]); idem, A Dictionary of the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Tamudic and Geonic Periods (Dictionaries of the Talmud, Midrash and Targum 3; Publications of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project; Ramat-Gan / Baltimore: Bar Ilan University Press / Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); idem, A Dictionary of Judean Aramaic (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003). To buy at the best prices: go here, here, and here.

Psalm 22:17 Bibliography

Michael Barré, “The Crux of Psalm 22:17c: Solved at Long Last?,” in David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004) 287-306; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 with 2004 Supplement by Marvin E. Tate (second edition; WBC 19; Nashville: Nelson, 2004 [1983]; Peter Flint, The Dead Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 83, 87; John Kaltner, “Psalm 22:17b: Second Guessing ‘The Old Guess,’” JBL 117 (1998) 503-06; Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002 [1883], 5:199; Gary A. Rendsburg, “Philological Notes,” HS 43 (2002) 21-30; J. J. M. Roberts, “A New Root for an Old Crux: Ps 22:17c,” VT 23 (1973) 247-52); Brent A. Strawn, “Psalm 22:17b: More Guessing,’ JBL 119 (2000) 439-51; Kristin Swenson, Psalm 22:17: Circling around the Problem Again, JBL 123 (2004) 637-648; Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22:17B: ‘The Old Guess,’” JBL 116 (1997) 45-46

Additional Bibliography

CDA = Jeremy Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (SANTAG 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; 2000)

Comments

[Nathan Bierma]

Interesting! Many thanks for this.

Here's my earlier meditation based on this word, which I'll now have to revisit...

[JohnFH]

Nathan,

you and your friends have a beautiful website. I have the highest respect for Calvin as an institution. I wish you well there.

Your meditation you point to is wonderful. You wrote a theologically sensitive piece with the information at your disposal. That's about the best any of us can do.

Note that we agree on your main point:

The image here is not so much of a person being slowly bled to death, but a person being devoured, ripped to shreds by hungry beasts. In Psalm 22, those aren’t nails in his hands; those are fangs.

[Duane]

Nice post. I think you've done a great job of bringing the evidence and the possibilities together. I'm not so sure that you're answer is the highest probability answer. I'm not sure it isn't. I was hoping that the Sultantepe text that I cited in my post would have a greater number of points of contact with Psalm 22:17. I'm not sure that it needed to contain batāqu, there are other alternatives. I did hope the Sultantepe text would contain hands and/or feet. It didn't. That's why, as you know, one needs to good to the texts and not stop at even a great dictionary. I also worried that the Sultantepe text was a little to distant and possibly specific to Sultantepe.

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Duane, for presenting us with the Sultantepe text. I wonder what other interesting texts are escaping our attention.

And you are right: the search should involve more verbs than one.

[Kenneth Greifer]

John,

What about the part that comes after "they have pierced my hands and my feet"? Was it a common expression to say that someone would count all of his bones? How do you explain that part of the psalm?

Kenneth Greifer

[JohnFH]

Kenneth,

"I can count all my bones" is a vivid expression. I can't think of an exact parallel in other ANE literature, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Psalm 31:10-14 is relevant in a general way.

The expression you ask about needs to be interpreted in light of the other mention of bones in the Psalm and the general context of the Psalm. Something like emaciation may well be implied.

The next question is, do you want to read this passage in light of others, and come up with a composite figure of a suffering Anointed One? If so - and that is how canonical exegesis has always worked, with one scripture being allowed to interpret another in the service of filling in the details of, for example, the Messianic hope of believers - then Ps 22 may be aligned with Is 53, for example. But there is no obligation that the two aforesaid texts be aligned. It is simply a possibility within a widely held approach to reading the Bible which Jews and Christians hold in common.

[Kenneth Greifer]

John,

I think the translation "I can count all of my bones" sounds like someone who is wasting away and can see his bones. If it says "I will count all of my bones", then it does not sound exactly the same.

I gave an translation where he is counting his hands and feet to poetically say that he is not a worm anymore. Saying that he will count his bones could poetically mean that he is wasting away, but does it really say he "can" count his bones or is that a way of fixing the translation to fit a person's belief about what the quote should say?

Kenneth Greifer

[JohnFH]

That's an excellent question, Kenneth.

The verb form in question is a yiqtol. General semantics sometimes requires that it be translated in English with "can, "may," or "must" do something rather than simply "will" do something. For example, "you may eat" in Gen 2:16: this is permissive, not a command. In Exodus 12:11, the very same form must be translated as "you must eat" or "you are to eat": it is a command.

You also need to realize that with the verb spr "count" it is to be expected that it may be used as it is here. For example, in 1 Kings 8:5, mention is made of oxen that "could not be counted." Once again, a straight yiqtol is used.

Language is a supple instrument. It is extremely context-sensitive. If you have to guess around a lot about what a phrase means in a specific context, that probably just means that your grasp of the language is insufficient. You can pore through dictionaries and grammar books and hope to make up for that by reading them. But in reality, grammar books and dictionaries are crutches which collapse on impact with not a few specific passages.

[John the Less]

Do you see any connection between Ps 22:17 and Ps 57:4?

I lie in the midst of lions that greedily devour the sons of men; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords. RSV

My soul is in the midst of lions;
I lie down amid fiery beasts—
the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.
ESV

[JohnFH]

John the Less,

Ps 22:17 and 57:5 are not very far apart in terms of imagery. Canine, feline, and bovine attackers are all mentioned in Ps 22:21-22.

In traditional Christological exegesis, the sufferings of David are like a mirror in which the sufferings of the Christ are reflected. It is not a question of one-to-one correspondence in detail. That isn't the expectation with prophecy in the strict sense either.

Nonetheless, the suffering of the psalmist is understood to cast light on the suffering of another. When we pray a psalm with ourselves in mind, the same basic hermeneutical move is performed.

[John the Less]

I'm sorry John, I was about to run out the door when I sent the above comment. What I was wondering was whether there might be a literary -- and possibly linguistic -- connection between 57:4's image of teeth and tongues, as spears, arrows and swords, and your translation of 22:17 as pierced?

Thanks,
JtL

[Raphael Gamaroff]

Taanis 24a חזיא לההוא גברא דהוה כריא בהוצא וקא חזי לה
It doesn’t say כארי but כריא. or is there something wrong with the above rendition? If above is correct, how would it affect your argument?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&q=Taanit+24a+חזיא+לההוא+גברא+דהוה+כריא+בהוצא+וקא+חזי+לה&sa=X&ei=cxXuT_fJJ5SHhQe3u-D2DA&ved=0CD4Q7xYoAA

(copy the whole from http to AA in your search engine for the reference).