[b-hebrew] karu or ka'ari (Ps 22:16) ?

Karl Randolph kwrandolph at email.com
Mon Apr 25 00:47:38 EDT 2005


Walter:

The answer is “in dispute”.

First, I have heard that there is at least one manuscript that has K)RW instead of K)RY, which then would make it a verb that fits the context.

Some Jewish authors insist that it must be read as a prefix K- on )RY, “as a lion” but that makes no grammatical nor linguistic sense.

As a verb, possibly it is used also in Amos 8:8, and nowhere else in Tanakh.

As a verb, K)R would then be a rarely used one, with possibly the meaning of piercing, wounding.

This could be a copyest error for KRW or some other verb, but with the aleph in the center of a verb almost always a hard aleph (in other 
words, it cannot be removed without changing the meaning) I find that unlikely.

So the final answer is that we can’t be sure. Ancient Jewish Christians gave one meaning to the verse, a meaning that has carried by tradition 
to the present. Other Jews contested that reading. Without consulting a native speaker, it probably is impossible to resolve the disagreement.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter R. Mattfeld" <mattfeld12 at charter.net>
> 
> I have a question of scholars on this list versed in Hebrew, is the 
> following information correct or incorrect, or "in dispute" as to 
> meaning regarding the word karu or ka'ari ?
> 
> Cf. the below quoted statement:
> 
> "On Psalm 22:16 "they pierced my hands and my feet" (King James 
> Version), Christians here found a famous example of an explicit 
> prefiguration of Jesus's sufferings. In the Gospel story, the 
> Romans pierce his hands and feet with nails in preparation for his 
> being hung upon the cross. Nitzachon Vetus answered that the word 
> given in the Latin translation as "they pierced" is written in the 
> Hebrew original not as karu ("they pierced"), but as ka'ari ("like 
> a lion"). The entire verse is properly translated, "For dogs have 
> surrounded me; a pack of evildoers has enclosed me, like a lion 
> [at] my hands and my feet." In biblical poetry, such as in the book 
> of Psalms, the second half of a verse typically echoes the first. 
> With this in mind, we should expect the imagery of being torn by 
> wild beasts to be consistent from phrase to phrase -and it is. A 
> modern update of the King James Bible, the Revised Standard 
> Version, now includes a footnote acknowledging the more authentic 
> translation of the verse." (p. 168. David Klinghoffer. Why The Jews 
> Rejected Jesus. New York. Doubleday. 2005. ISBN 0-385-51021-7)
> 
> Regards, Walter
> Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre, M.A. Ed.
> mattfeld12 at charter.net
> www.bibleorigins.net
-- 
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