(1) Any suggestions on Psalm 22:16, which is often rendered "They pierced my hands and my feet"?
The word rendered "they pierced" (LXX and many English translations) looks like it's actually "Like a lion" But then it's hard to make sense of the flow of the line ("Like a lion [they clawed?] my hands and my feet" perhaps). As far as I can tell, though, there's no way to get "they pierced" from the root of this Hebrew word. On the other hand, they *did* actually pierce Jesus' hands and feet. On the third hand, this verse isn't explicitly cited in connection with that piercing....
(2) How do you understand the last word of v. 21 (yehidati)? It seems to mean "my only one" and to be parallel with "my soul/life" (naphshi) in the previous stich. Does it mean "my only life" -- that is, I only have one and it's precious to me?
(3) How about Psalm 22:21? The cola are nicely balanced:
Rescue me from the mouth of the lion
And from the horns of the wild oxen you have answered me
But the second line doesn't make a lot of sense in English (maybe not in Hebrew either?). It appears to mean "You have answered my request, which was that you would deliver me from the horns of the wild oxen." And so some English translations treat the two "from" clauses together and connect them with "rescue" and make the "answered" clause separate:
Rescue me from the mouth of the lion
And from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered me.
The gist turns out to be the same -- the cry has been answered -- but is there something to the first translation that better gets at the meaning of the Hebrew than the second, more interpretive one?
Help?
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