Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 22:16

"For dogs have compassed me: A company of evil-doers have inclosed me; They pierced my hands and my feet." — Psalms 22:16 (ASV)

Dogs. —Literally, barkers. (For the wild scavenger dogs of the East, compare to 1 Kings 12:19 and following.) Symmachus and Theodotion render “hunting dogs.”

The assembly of the wicked denotes the factious nature of the attacks on the sufferer. His enemies have combined, as savage animals, to hunt in packs. Compare to Virgil, Æn. ii. 351:—

——“lupi ceu
Raptores atra in nebula.”

They pierced. —The word thus rendered has formed a battleground for controversy. As the Hebrew text at present stands, the word reads kâarî (like a lion). (Compare to Isaiah 38:13.) However, no intelligible meaning can be obtained from “like a lion my hands and my feet.”

Nor does the plan of dividing the verses differently commend itself, which would involve reading, “The congregation of wicked men have gathered round me like a lion. On my hands and my feet I can tell all my bones.” Therefore, the punctuation of the text must be abandoned, and a meaning sought by changing the reading. The necessity for such a change is supported by the ancient versions, some manuscripts, and also by the Masora, although considerable disagreement exists as to how the word should be read.

If the authority of the ancient versions alone were to decide, some verb in the past tense must be read. However, the most reasonable course is to accept the present text but with a different vowel, treating it as a participle with a suffix from kûr. According to Ewald, its root idea is “to bind”; according to most other scholars, it is “to dig.”

It is, however, so doubtful whether it can mean to dig through—i.e., to pierce—that it is better to understand here a binding of the limbs so tightly as to dig into them and wound them. Render: “The band of villains [literally, breakers] surrounded me, binding my hands and feet so as to cut them.”