Does Psalm 22:16 really say "pierced," or "like a lion"?
The medieval Hebrew (the Masoretic Text) reads "like a lion," and critics call "pierced" a Christian edit. But "pierced" is the older reading, and it is not Christian: the Greek Septuagint translated it "they dug/pierced" two centuries before Jesus, and a Dead Sea Scrolls Psalms fragment reads ka'aru, "they have dug/pierced," a verb, not a lion. "They pierced my hands and my feet" (Psa 22:16) is the ancient reading, and the one the whole passage points to.
The standard medieval Hebrew, the Masoretic Text, reads at Psalm 22:16 ka'ari, "like a lion." So the charge is that the KJV's "they pierced my hands and my feet" reads the cross back into a verse that really says only "like a lion my hands and my feet."
The answer
Three things answer it, and none of them is Christian.
First, the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament made by Jewish scholars around the second century before Christ, rendered the word "they dug," that is, pierced. Jewish translators, long before there was a cross to defend, read it as piercing.
Second, the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Psalms fragment from Nahal Hever reads ka'aru, "they have dug/pierced," an action done to the hands and feet, not ka'ari, "like a lion." That is a Hebrew text from the first century AD, some nine centuries older than the Masoretic Text, and it reads "pierced."
Third, the sentence itself. "Like a lion my hands and my feet" leaves the hands and feet with nothing done to them; "they pierced my hands and my feet" completes the line. And the verses around it describe a man surrounded, stripped, stared at, his bones out of joint and his garments gambled for (Psa 22:14-18): a crucifixion, written centuries before Rome used one.
How the New Testament read it
The apostles took the Messiah's death as exactly this, a piercing. Zechariah had already said, "they shall look upon me whom they have pierced" (Zech 12:10), which John applies to the cross: "They shall look on him whom they pierced" (John 19:37). And Thomas would believe only when he could see "the print of the nails" in His hands (John 20:25). The oldest Hebrew, the oldest Greek, and the whole witness of the New Testament read one wound: pierced.
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Verified. Every scripture quotation on this page has been checked word-for-word against the King James text. Last reviewed 2026-10-07.
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