They have pierced my hands and my feet

"They have pierced my hands and my feet", or "They pierced my hands and my feet" is a phrase that occurs in some English translations of (Psalm 21:17 in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate; Psalm 22:16 King James Version). The text of the Hebrew Bible is obscure at this point, and Jewish and some Christian commentators translate this line differently, although there is no evidence of a deliberate mistranslation. King James Version 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. This verse, which is Psalm 22:17 in the Hebrew verse numbering, reads in most versions of the Masoretic Text as: כארי ידי ורגלי, which may be read literally as "like a lion my hands and my feet". The full verse of the Masoretic Text reads: (Kî sĕḇāḇûnî kĕlāḇîm 'ăḏaṯ mĕrē'îm hiqqîp̄ûnî kā'ărî yāḏay wĕraḡlāy). The syntactical form of this Hebrew phrase appears to be lacking a verb. In this context the phrase was commonly explained in early Rabbinical paraphrases as "they bite like a lion my hands and my feet". The Septuagint, a Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek made before the Christian Era, has "ὤρυξαν χεῗράς μου καὶ πόδας" ("they dug my hands and feet"), which Christian commentators argue could be understood in the general sense as "pierced". This reading was retained by Jerome in his translation from the Greek Hexapla into the Latin of his Gallican Psalter (Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos) which was incorporated into both the Vulgate and the Divine Office. While this translation is highly controversial, it is asserted in Christian apologetics that the Dead Sea Scrolls lend weight to the translation as "They have pierced my hands and my feet", by lengthening the ending yud in the Hebrew word כארי (like a lion) into a vav כארו "Kaaru", which is not a word in the Hebrew language but when the aleph is omitted becomes כרו, dig, similar to the Septuagint translation. The oldest surviving manuscript of the psalm comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in 1947.