Zechariah 12:10, “they will look on me whom they pierced”?
Zechariah 12:10 reads “to me” in the Masoretic Text and “to him” in a minority of Hebrew manuscripts. The difference is one letter, changing whether the pierced one is the LORD who speaks or someone else.
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 APB translation committee prints “And they will look toward me, whom they pierced”. Its printed text then continues with “and they will mourn over him”. The translation therefore retains the first person in the clause about looking and the third person in the clause about mourning.
The argument for each reading
If “look on me”
The Masoretic Text reads אלי את אשר דקרו, identifying the speaker, the LORD, as the one whom they pierced. This gives the first person a direct role in the clause: the people look toward the speaker himself. The Septuagint also preserves the first person, although its different rendering of the verb prevents it from supporting the entire reading. Together, these witnesses give a basis for retaining “me” while showing that the pronoun and the action described by the verb are separate questions.
If “look on him”
A minority of medieval Hebrew manuscripts reads אליו, directing the people's gaze toward someone other than the LORD who is speaking. The Gospel of John's quotation also uses the third person and applies the verse to the crucified one. These witnesses give a basis for “to him” in both Hebrew transmission and quotation. The reading eases the startling identification of the speaker as the pierced one. Its support remains distinct in kind: the Hebrew manuscripts preserve a variant pronoun, while the Gospel presents a quotation.
The witnesses preserve a disagreement about the person toward whom the people look. Their readings do not establish how the difference arose. The choice changes whether the LORD identifies himself as pierced or directs attention toward someone else. Both readings retain the act of looking, and the surrounding mourning remains. The pronoun alone does not settle the passage's theological interpretation.
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.