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Joseph Weissman
Many have been confused by the alternate kaaru & kaari readings; but only one can be true.
reformedmasora.substack.com
Steven Avery
Joseph Weissman
- very nice to see a study on the Psalm 22:16 issue that discusses the pressure on Bomberg.
Here is how far I had gone on this, I added your blog post, with name and URL. See you have other interesting material on similar topics.
Pure Bible Forum
Psalm 22:16 - the Ben Hayim rabbinic Bible and the Drusius report - chiastic structure
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/psalm-22-16-the-ben-hayim-rabbinic-bible-and-the-drusius-report-chiastic-structure.1673/
From my preliminary reading, your scholarship is superb!
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"They Pierced My Hands & My Feet": The Masoretic Text Vindicated in Psalm 22:16 by Salomo Glassius
The jot is a diminutive waw or "little letter"
Reformed Masora
Apr 29, 2025
1) Steelmanning the Septuagint Priority Position
One of the biggest frustrations in theological arguments is the
strawman, wherein the debater seeks to construct a weaker version of his opponent’s argument than the one actually made, in order to knock it down more easily, and claim victory. This tactic is typically accompanied by the malice of misrepresentation or oversimplification – often with a mocking tone.
The opposite of the strawman is the steelman, where the opponent’s argument is fortified – and can even be quoted back to him in terms to which he would agree. Accordingly, when it comes to the Confessional Text Position, we would be amiss to simply call any views critical of the Masoretic Text left-leaning, liberal, antisemitic, papist, or an Eastern Orthodox Trojan horse.
My intent is not to cast proponents of Septuagint priority as bad actors, but rather, to clear away confusions so that they might see more easily the validity and purity of the Masoretic Text.
If we could form a syllogism that accurately represents the Septuagint advocate’s views, it would read like this:
- The textual basis for the Word of God must be pure and uncorrupted.
- The Jewish rabbis corrupted the Masoretic Hebrew text of Scripture.
- Therefore the Masoretic Text of Scripture is not the Word of God.
The first premise is both valid and true, yet the middle term is the one in dispute. We will examine the claim
that the Jewish rabbis corrupted the Masoretic Hebrew text of Scripture; but first, it is worth explaining the controversy in simple terms.
2) The controversy about Psalm 22:16 explained: kaaru vs kaari
The last phrase of Psalm 22:16 reads, according to the Confessional Text Position: כָּארוּ יָדַי וְרַגְלָי: “they pierced my hands and my feet.” However, the
JPS version of Psalm 22:16 reads: כָּאֲרִי , יָדַי וְרַגְלָי: “like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.” The eagle-eyed reader will spot the difference in the Hebrew: the last letter of the word כָּארוּ/כָּאֲרִי is in dispute (Hebrew being read right-to-left).
כָּארוּ (
kaaru) means “they have pierced,” while כָּאֲרִי (
kaari) means “like a lion”: two facts which you ought to keep in mind throughout this article.
A Septuagint-advocate could gain strength from John Calvin’s commentary on Psalm 22:16. I have reproduced the relevant section with emphasis in bold:
16. They have pierced my hands and my feet.
“The original word, which we have translated they have pierced, is כארי, caari, which literally rendered is, like a lion. As all the Hebrew Bibles at this day, without exception, have this reading, I would have had great hesitation in departing from a reading which they all support, were it not that the scope of the discourse compels me to do so, and were there not strong grounds for conjecturing that this passage has been fraudulently corrupted by the Jews.
With respect to the Septuagint version, there is no doubt that the translators had read in the Hebrew text, כארו, caaru, that is the letter ו, vau, where there is now the letter י, yod. The Jews prate much about the literal sense being purposely and deliberately overthrown, by our rendering the original word by they have pierced: but for this allegation there is no color of truth whatever. What need was there to trifle so presumptuously in a matter where it was altogether unnecessary? Very great suspicion of falsehood, however, attaches to them, seeing it is the uppermost desire of their hearts to despoil the crucified Jesus of his escutcheons, and to divest him of his character as the Messiah and Redeemer. If we receive this reading as they would have us to do, the sense will be enveloped in marvellous obscurity.
In the first place, it will be a defective form of expression, and to complete it, they say it is necessary to supply the verb to surround or to beset. But what do they mean by besetting the hands and the feet? Besetting belongs no more to these parts of the human body than to the whole man. The absurdity of this argument being discovered, they have recourse to the most ridiculous old wives’ fables, according to their usual way, saying, that the lion, when he meets any man in his road, makes a circle with his tail before rushing upon his prey: from which it is abundantly evident that they are at a loss for arguments to support their view.”
Calvin’s view therefore is that the Septuagint translators had access to a proto-Hebraic Scripture that preserved the correct reading of כָּארוּ (
kaaru), whereas the Masoretic Text of the Jews has כָּאֲרִי (
kaari). Calvin argued that the Septuagint translated from this uncorrupted version – and asserted that
all the Hebrew Bibles had the
kaari reading, rather than
kaaru.
The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia – intended to be an exact copy of the text of the Leningrad Codex – contains the כָּאֲרִי reading, as you can see from my BHS (see the markings in red):
Thus a surface-level assessment seems to corroborate Calvin’s judgment that the Hebrew was corrupted.
Naturally therefore, Psalm 22:16 is one of the Septuagint-prioritist’s strongest arguments. In the Septuagint, this verse reads:
ὅτι ἐκύκλωσάν με κύνες πολλοί συναγωγὴ πονηρευομένων περιέσχον με ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας
The word ὤρυξαν corresponds to the English word
dug.
But you don’t have to be a Septuagint-priority advocate to advance the Septuagint’s reading of Psalm 22:16. James White – who favors an eclectic view of the Old Testament, using minority readings from the LXX to correct the Masoretic – stated (at 45:35 in this
video):
“Here’s a place where the Greek Septuagint is indicating that its source material, its tradition, it’s one of those places where it differs from the Masoretic and in fact, may go earlier than the Masoretic does, and there’s lots of places like that in the Old Testament text.”
It is a reasonable conclusion for someone who holds to the eclectic position, to want to go with the best choices at each juncture, and I can see the logic that leads to preferring the Septuagint in this place, on face value.
Yet there is more to this controversy than first meets the eye.
3) The Orthodox כָּארוּ Reading is Found within the Masoretic Hebrew Text
Several of the modern translations acknowledge that the Hebrew manuscripts acknowledge כָּארוּ as a variant reading alongside כָּאֲרִי . For example, the ESV recognises כָּארוּ from: “
Some Hebrew manuscripts, Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac”; the NKJV: “So with some Heb. mss., LXX, Syr., Vg.”
Benjamin Kennicott compiled all the variants in his
Vetus Testamentus Hebraicum (1776, p.323) from 600 Masoretic manuscripts. He clearly acknowledged כָּארוּ as an alternative Masoretic reading, as can be seen here:
Furthermore, the German scholar Wilhelm Gesenius in his
Introduction of the Massoretico-critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (1897, pp.968-970) quotes Jacob ben Chayyim, the eminent Masoretic scholar, as saying:
“In some correct codices I have found כָּארוּ as the Kethiv [textual reading] and כָּאֲרִי as the Kari [the official marginal reading]; but I have searched in the list of words which are written with Vav in the end and are read with Yod did not find it therein. Neither did I find it noticed amongst the variations which exist in the Bible between the Easterns and the Westerns.”
Gesenius also observes that the Massorah Magna notes כָּאֲרִי as the textual reading in Numbers 24:9. It registers three other places where כָּאֲרִי appears as the textual reading: Isaiah 38:13, Ezekiel 22:25, and Psalm 22:17 [Psalm 22:16 in our English Bibles] - in this place, it says that it should read כָּארוּ, meaning
they cut, pierced.
Lutheran scholar
Johann Gerhard in attests that the best Jewish copies did read (כָּארוּ) “they pierced”, and that a library in his own academy had a Hebrew reading saying (כָּארוּ). Here is a quote from Gerhard:
“Genebrardus, the Papist, in his commentary on this passage, p. 79, does not dare say that this passage was corrupted by the malice of the Jews but only that there is a variant reading because of the similarity of the letters ו [waw] and י [yodh]. In the same place he also proves with the testimonies of very learned Jews that the best texts had כָּארוּ [they have pierced]; this is also claimed by Andrada (Defens. fid., bk. 4); Joh. Isaacus (Contra Lindan., bk. 2); Galatinus (De arcan. Cath. verit. 1.8; 8.17); Gerhard Veltvyckus (appendix to Sessile tohu); and Pagninus, Vatablus, and Mullerus (in their commentaries on this passage). In fact, the library of our academy has a handwritten Hebrew manuscript that reads כָּארוּ.”
I favor irenicism over controversy where possible, and it is totally reasonable to believe Calvin when he says that all the copies read כָּאֲרִי, and also Gerhard when he testifies – along with other scholars – to the presence of כָּארוּ readings. Furthermore, Gerhard’s testimony is confirmed by William Whitaker, who notes that:
“Learned men testify that many Hebrew copies are found in which the reading is Caaru; Andradinus, Defens. Trid. Lib IV, and Galatinus, Lib VIII c.17. And John Isaac writes that he himself sees such a copy, in his book against Lindanus, Lib. II, and the Masoretes themselves affirm that it was so written in some corrected copies.”
4) Kaaru not Kaari is upheld by the Confessional Text Position
We have established that “they have pierced” (כָּארוּ
kaaru) and “like a lion” (כָּאֲרִי
kaari) are
both Masoretic readings, and that the pure reading of כָּארוּ
kaaru was never lost from the Hebrew Masora, as Confessional Text advocates uphold.
It is not a problem for us that variants exist within the Hebrew confessional text. I think that at times, advocates of our position have been reluctant to admit this, because we fear being accused of uncertainty. However, there is difference between judging between variants from a pure textual tradition of the original language, and making the Word of God constantly subject to archaeological discoveries concerning ancient translations, as if the streams were purer than the sources.
Concerning our immediate problem, William Perkins’ words are helpful here in this matter (
The Art of Prophesying, 1607, p.88):
“If a word given in the Bible, whether it be a Hebrew word or a Greek, if first it does agree with grammatical construction, and with other approved copies: if also it does agree in respect of the sense with the circumstances and drift of the place, and with the analogy of faith, it is proper and natural.”
The key here for this discussion is that last part: agrees with the analogy of faith. The analogy of faith is the harmony of all Scripture, and the doctrine of it is taken from Romans 12:6, in which we are instructed to prophesy according to the proportion [analogy] of faith. When we are faced with variants within the received Hebrew text, we have a mechanism to determine the true reading. Perkins immediately uses the analogy of faith to judge the correctness of כָּארוּ
kaaru:
“Now the rule propounded does teach that this latter reading is to be followed. For it agreeth. 1. with grammatical construction: 2. with the circumstances of the Psalm: 3. with some ancient copies: yea even by the testimony of the Jews.”
Thus we reject כָּאֲרִי
kaari and embrace כָּארוּ
kaaru.
5) We Reject Calvin’s View that the Jews Corrupted the Text of Scripture
Once we have cleared the correct reading, we have to ask
how this issue came about.
Pace Calvin, it does not fit that the Jews had simply corrupted the Word of God here.
Eusebius reports Philo of Alexandria as having said, concerning the Jews and the laws of Moses:
“They have not changed so much as a single word in them. They would rather die a thousand deaths than detract anything from these laws and statutes.”
And
Josephus is reported as having said:
“But what faith we have placed in our own writings we have shown by our conduct; for though so long a time is now passed, no one has dared either to add anything to them, or to take anything from them, or to alter anything. But the Jews are instinctively led from the moment of their birth to regard them as decrees of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, gladly die for them.”
Later Jewish writings back this up too, and we see the precision of Jewish scribal practice. When we look at the other prophecies of Scripture, we see these uncorrupted by Jewish hands, as Lord-willing we will prove in future articles. Yes the rabbis corrupted the
meaning of the text, but not the
text itself.
As Augustine argues in
The City of God (15.13):
“If I asked which is more believable: that the Jewish nation, scattered far and wide, could have conspired unanimously to write this lie and, while refusing authority to others, have deprived themselves of the truth; or that seventy men who were also Jews themselves, placed in one location, could have refused that same truth to foreign nations and could have done this by common consent? Who does not see which of these is more natural and easy to believe? God forbid, however, that any prudent person believe either that the Jews—however perverse and wicked—could have tampered with so many and such widely scattered codices or that those renowned seventy men could have taken this one common counsel about refusing the truth to the nations.”
Gerhard notes:
Paul says, “The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). Therefore he commends their zeal in protecting the books of the Old Testament from destruction and corruption. Yet if they had corrupted them intentionally, he could not have commended their zeal in protecting the treasury of sacred books nor would the apostle have ignored this terrible sin of theirs.
If the solution of Jewish corruption of the text is not to be admitted, what then explains the variant here? Before we come to the solution, some further preliminary information is needed for the reader.
6) A necessary detour: Big letters and little letters explained
A little known fact about the Masoretic Text is that some letters are enlarged, and some are diminished. Johannes Buxtorf commented that this was no invention by the Judaic rabbis in Tiberias, but rather, an ancient practice worthy of his commentary:
“The figure of letters was found in some without the common use either greater or less, either inverted or pointed extraordinarily.
No doubt, the ancient wise men had just and fit causes of this diversity, but such as the various dispersions and most heavy calamities of their posterity brought into oblivion, or for the most part turned into several fictions and groundless mysteries. It is well, those diverse figures, however, are preserved as eternal monuments and testimonies of the ancient wisdom.
We will content ourselves with a taste, being assured that the use of this writing also is most ancient, noted in the Masora long before the time of the Talmud, and not first invented by the Tiberians who lived after it: for it is mentioned in the Talmud tract, De Scribis c. 9.”
Buxtorf observes on the big letters:
“A great א is extant in the word אָדָם Adam in 1 Chronicles 1:1, so that it might be a memorial of the first and only man, from whom the writer there intended to deduce the original and the history of mankind. That it was done to begin the book, as some will have it, is the less probable, because that is observed very seldom in the beginning of other books.
A great בּ in the word בְּרֵאשִׁית in the beginning of Genesis 1:1 to mind us to consider the greatness and sublimity of the work of creation: which is twofold, of the heaven and of the earth, signified also by the numeral value of the letter בּ.”
And also:
“A great ד in אֶחָד one (Deuteronomy 6:4). In that illustrious sentence שְׁמַע, יִשְׂרָאֵל: יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָד: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” In this sentence the letter ע is also a great one: ד to signify that the eternal Lord is the only God in the four parts of the world, that is, in the whole world, both in heaven and earth, and no other God in any part of the world besides him. For the letter ד stands for four.
The two great letters in this sentence conjoined make the word ,עֵד a witness, as if they would thereby say unto us: “Hear Israel and be a witness to me, that I have seriously admonished thee concerning the one true and eternal God:” according to that, “Ye shall be my witnesses says the Lord,” (Isaiah 43:10).”
Significantly, Buxtorf also mentions the
little letters in the Masoretic Text too:
“The little letters signify diminution and contempt; as a little ב in the word הַב, (Proverbs 30:15): “The horseleech hath two daughters, called give, give.” The horseleech is a symbol or sign of a covetous man: their estate, to whom his daughters are married, is sucked out and diminished. If at any time he does good to a poor man, he never does it gratis, but requires double by his daughters give, give, till the poor man be brought to extremity; and this diminution is intimated by the smallness of the letter.
A little ד in the word אָדָם in Proverbs 28:17. “A man that does violence to the blood of any person;” to show the misery of he who is guilty of shedding of blood, that he is even unworthy of the name of man.
A little ה in the word בְּהִבָּרְאָם in Genesis 2:4, “when they were created,” to wit, the heaven and the earth; to declare that all created things shall decay and perish; and as the letter consists of broken parts, so shall they be dissolved.”
7) The Controversy Explained: the last letter of כָּארוּ no jot (י), but rather, a little waw (וּ).
The best explanation of how the error came about is found in Salomo Glassius, as reported by James Owen.
It is worth noting that Glassius is no fringe figure. He was a student of Johannes Gerhard. Westminster divine
Edward Reynolds cited Glassius in his commentary on Ecclesiastes,
John Owen cited him approvingly in his work on holy Scripture, and
Herman Witsius did so in his Economy of the Covenants.
Edward Leigh described Glasisus as a “learned Lutheran, and the great ornament of Germany for sacred philology.”
James Owen writes (
A Further Vindication of the Dissenters from the Rector of Bury’s Unjust Accusations Wherein his Charge of their being Corrupters of the Word of God is Demonstrated to be False and Malicious, 1699, p.70 - emphasis mine):
“The learned Glassius, who was a great critic [of the] Hebrew tongue, says that כָּאֲרִי as a lion, ought to be rendered (as כָּארוּ pierced, and that כָּאֲרִי is the 3rd person plural preterit in Kal of כרה but in an [art] form, א being inserted, as is usual in other words, and י put in the end for Ezra 10:44 נָשְׂאי they had taken for נָשְׂאוּ. He refers to more examples of this kind, as in Jeremiah 50:11, and he calls this letter - as Brixianus and others [had] before him - not jot but a diminutive waw, which is therefore thus written: [Clarè] inuat clavorum Christi stigmara: to signify the marks of the nails in [the] hands and feet. Hence it is written in Codregiis כָּאֲרִי as if י had been [instead?] of וּ as it in Jeremiah 50:11 four several times, and so it is used in other places.”
By speaking of a “diminutive waw,” James Owen here is referring to the practice of
little letters and
big letters in the Masoretic Text, as discussed by Buxtorf. The jot was therefore a diminished waw, so to represent the nails in Christ’s hands and feet.
Indeed, the places cited by Glassius bear out that a jot is sometimes in the place of a waw.
Here are the four instances cited by Owen out of Glass from Jeremiah 50:11 in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, in which תִשְׂמְחי, תַעַלְזי, תָפוּשׁי, and וְתִצְהֲלי are replaced by תִשְׂמְחוּ, תַעַלְזוּ, תָפוּשׁוּ, and וְתִצְהֲלוּ.
These places are also cited by the JPS Tanakh at
Mechon Mamre, with the minority, yet grammatically-correct readings offered in gray.
Here the text indicates that the second-person plural words all end in jots, with a waw offered as the minority reading in each case. Yet grammatically, these words can only make sense if they end in waw. Consider the verse in English (KJV - emphasis mine):
“Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of mine heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and bellow as bulls;”
Thus we can conclude that the four jots here were intended as diminished waws.
So also the note on Ezra 10:44 in the JPS:
And the JPS in Ezra 10:44 shows the same renderings:
Ezra 10:44 in the KJV reads (emphasis mine):
All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children.
The waw here indicates a third-person plural preterit, yet a jot is written instead.
Thus for Glassius, these two verses (Jeremiah 50:11 and Ezra 10:44) are thus comparable to Psalm 22:16.
8) Judaic Corruption Explained Properly by James Owen
If כָּארוּ is upheld as a pure Hebrew reading, are the Judaic scribes thus exonerated from charges of corruption?
James Owen explains how they were still rightly to blame for their choice of reading, and pressure on the printer of the Bomberg Bible:
“Our English translator the marginal reading כָּרוּ they have pierced, as being at liberty to choose either, and the Jews themselves in other places prefer the keri, or marginal [reading]. Of the two readings here no wonder the modern Jews should prefer that [which] most to favour their Cause. The famous and indefatigable Dan. Bomberg, [owned?] himself in publishing the noble Venetian Edition of the Masoretic Bible have restored the marginal reading into the text, but the Jew that [corrupted] press, diverted him from his intention, by threatning to hinder the sale of [copies] among his countrymen.”
Thus they maliciously chose the corrupted reading because it suited their prejudices better, but crucially,
they did not corrupt the text itself.
9) The purity of the Hebrew reading of Psalm 22:16 proved from Jerome
Psalm 22:16 (21:17) in the
Latin Vulgate reads:
“Quoniam circumdederunt me canes multi; concilium malignantium obsedit me. Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos;”
This reads in the English translation of the Vulgate, the
Douai-Rheims Bible:
“For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet.”
We can thus prove that Jerome had a Hebrew reading of כָּארוּ, as he was able to get the translation of the verse correct, without any mention of a lion – and he, like us, preferred the Hebrew Masora to the Greek Septuagint.
10) Conclusion.
With all this in mind, the last letter of כָּארוּ not being a jot (
י), but rather, a little waw (
וּ), to represent the nails in Christ’s hands and feet, falls into place.
The purity of the Hebrew original on Psalm 22:16 is established, the correct reading is distinguished, and the Septuagint – while correct in this place – is not necessary.
We have proven that the Hebrew was correct even in Jerome’s day, leading him to a correct translation of it, and shown that the apparent jot should be read as a diminutive waw, representing the nails of Christ’s cross.
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