Psalm 22:16, “they pierced” or “like a lion”?
Psalm 22:16 has both readings: the Masoretic Text reads like a lion, while the Naḥal Ḥever Psalms scroll supports they dug / pierced. A single final letter separates the Hebrew forms.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads כארי; the committee adopted כארו on the evidence of the copies. The early and independent witnesses read a verb here, and the default differs by a single easily confused letter.”
The committee adopted כארו: "The base text reads כארי; the committee adopted כארו on the evidence of the copies. The early and independent witnesses read a verb here, and the default differs by a single easily confused letter." The translators were GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) in the first seat and Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) in the second. After the committee's run, the chair changed the lion wording to "They have pierced my hands and my feet." The changed source required retranslation. Automated comparisons with the earlier English had refused the wording; it then passed the committee's fidelity audit, meaning review and recall check.
Before: For dogs have surrounded me; a congregation of evildoers has encircled me. Like a lion, they encircle my hands and my feet.
After: For dogs have surrounded me; a congregation of evildoers has encircled me. They have pierced my hands and my feet.
“The decided source text changed in the textual re-read of 2026-10-04 (GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Fable 5.1, blind): כָּ֝ אֲרִ֗י is replaced by כארו. The committee retranslated the verse from the source (source_fix rr1004); code gates that compare the new English with the old refused the wording for what the changed source requires. The wording then passed the committee’s fidelity audit, meaning review and recall check (source_fix_rr1004_chair_gate_20261004).”
The argument for each reading
If “they pierced”
The case for כארו rests on Hebrew manuscript evidence and translations that read a verb. The Naḥal Ḥever Psalms scroll, the oldest surviving Hebrew witness to this clause, ends the word with vav. The Septuagint renders the clause as an action: they dug my hands and feet. Its translation predates the reading's Christian stakes. Jerome's Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos, which he translated directly from the Hebrew, also gives a verb: they fastened / pierced.
These witnesses support an action directed at the speaker's hands and feet. Their renderings leave some room over the English verb: dug, fastened, and pierced do not convey precisely the same action. The final vav distinguishes this reading from the lion comparison by the length of one downstroke.
If “like a lion”
The case for כארי begins with the Masoretic Text (Westminster Leningrad Codex), which preserves and points the word as like a lion. Its manuscript represents a tradition centuries older than the codex itself. This gives the lion reading a place in the transmitted Hebrew text.
The clause carries no verb. A translation retaining the lion comparison therefore has to convey how the image relates to the speaker's hands and feet without an explicit action in that clause. The surrounding language of dogs and encircling evildoers gives the comparison a setting of animal imagery and threat. This reading makes the hands and feet part of that threatening image; it does not explicitly say that they were pierced.
The witnesses differ over whether the clause contains a verb or a lion comparison. The verb renderings also leave uncertainty about the precise action described. Both readings retain the speaker's hands and feet within a scene of danger and bodily suffering. The choice changes the explicit description of those limbs. It does not settle a doctrinal claim about the psalm's application; doctrines generally draw on many passages.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.