"They pierced my hands and my feet"; "they part my garments"
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16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
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13They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
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15My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
23Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
24They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.
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20This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
21Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.
22Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.
23Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
24They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.
25Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
26When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
27Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
In Hebrew Bibles the verse is 22:17. The standard Hebrew text reads "like a lion [at] my hands and my feet", with no verb. The Septuagint, translated by Jews before Christianity, has a verb, "they dug"; the Nahal Hever fragment and some Hebrew manuscripts read k'rw; Aquila, Symmachus and Jerome have "bound". The KJV translates the line with a verb, "pierced".
Mark records Jesus praying the psalm's opening words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (), a cry widely judged historical. The psalm goes on to describe mockers who "shake the head" (), hands and feet attacked, "they pierced my hands and my feet" (), and "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture" (). The Gospels record that the soldiers divided Jesus' clothes, and John presents it as done "that the scripture might be fulfilled" (). The psalm then turns from abandonment to deliverance, and to a hope that "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD" (). On the famous line, the Septuagint, translated by Jews before Christianity, reads a verb, "they dug", and a fragment found at Nahal Hever and some Hebrew manuscripts read k'rw in place of the standard text's "like a lion". A later Jewish work, Pesikta Rabbati, applies the psalm to a suffering "Ephraim, the Messiah of righteousness".
Psalm 22 is an individual lament that turns to thanksgiving: a prayer rather than a prediction. No pre-Christian messianic reading of it is known. The fit rests on the Gospels telling the crucifixion in the psalm's own words, from the earliest Gospel onward. If Jesus prayed the psalm on the cross, as is widely held, he made its words his own. The "pierced" line is a genuine textual question on which scholars are divided, and no Gospel quotes it.
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The standard Hebrew text reads "like a lion [at] my hands and my feet", without a verb. No ancient witness has a word that specifically means "pierced": the Septuagint has "dug", and Aquila, Symmachus and Jerome have "bound". Craigie judged the Hebrew "can scarcely be correct", while Strawn defends it and Vall proposes "bound". Mark tells the dividing of the garments and the wagging heads in the Septuagint's words without citing the psalm; Matthew adds the taunt of ; and John splits the psalm's two parallel lines into two separate acts (the garments, then the seamless tunic) and adds "I thirst" () to fulfil scripture. Taking the clothes of the condemned was routine under Roman law. Jewish readings applied the psalm to David, Esther or Israel, and Pesikta Rabbati is centuries later than Christianity.