Roy Blizzard III © 2023
In Psalms 22, the Psalm that Jesus quotes from the cross, we read in verse 12 in the KJV and verse 13 in the Hebrew text that “Many bulls have encompassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.” This appears to the average reader pretty straightforward when it’s read in English, but when I read it I immediately had a problem, something didn’t make sense. I then turned to the Hebrew text and I had an even bigger problem. Of course my problem isn’t just in the Hebrew text, but in the Hebrew, Greek, and English texts in that they don’t make sense in context. This problem is not just a simple misreading that would make you think it’s no big deal, but this problem could be and should be a huge issue for the Church and much of Judaism for it points to a problem I have encountered many times and that is people just don’t research any longer but just parrot what someone else said years before, regardless if they were right or not or if what they have said made sense or not.
My issue is this whole verse in its context, but the phrase “The Bulls of Bashan” got me curious to investigate it in the first place. When I read the text in context with what Jesus went through on the cross and why he quoted Psalms 22, it became immediately obvious to me that Bashan is in Jordan and Syria and Jesus isn’t being oppressed by pagans from Jordan and Syria but right at home in Israel by his own countrymen, the same as King David. So why mention Bashan? It just doesn’t fit the context. So what does?
The first word of the passage is Savahvoonee – סְבָבוּנִי meaning surrounded by something or someone with a hostile intent. So was David surrounded by men from Bashan? Bulls? I’m pretty sure bulls don’t really have “hostile intent”. Men do but David wasn’t assailed by Syrians or Amorites etc., at the time but by his fellow countrymen who were led by the hostile King Saul. Even though many commentaries have tried to equate these “Bulls” euphemistically to the sort of strong men who were surrounding David there is simply no real evidence of any connection to Bashan and I got the feeling that they were just trying to make something up that sounded good but had no truth in it.
The second problem I see is with these bulls themselves. The commentaries all claim that these bulls are famous for being well fed, fat, and strong. Nothing is ever mentioned about them being dangerous. So are these bulls some kind of special, secret bulls that are terribly dangerous? Do they have fangs and want to come over and suck Jesus’ blood? Do they stalk Israelite people so they can trample them unawares? Do they usually surround people to stomp them? How are these special, really dangerous bulls raised in Bashan to keep them from killing all the people there? They didn’t have barbed wire fencing in the first century that I’m aware of so did these special bulls of Bashan walk from Syria and Jordan to surround Jesus on the cross?
Another issue with these bulls is that in the following passage, either 13 or 14 depending on your version, they are said to have sharp teeth and beset upon Jesus as ravaging Lions. Well that’s odd. I’ve never seen cows with fangs. I’ve never, ever seen any bull or cow attack someone with their teeth to try and kill them. The implausibility of this entire scenario means to me that there must be something else going on here that people have just ignored because they weren’t very smart or maybe others just didn’t want it translated correctly because it might cause them distress of one sort or the other or the usual – they just accepted what someone else told them about it and the error was perpetuated from then on.
Let’s look at this passage, verse 13, and dissect it to see what is really going on and what the problems are. I know most of you don’t know Hebrew but I’ll explain it as I go so that you can understand the problems. The Hebrew pointed text, reading right to left, is above what is commonly translated.
סְבָבוּנִי םיפָּר רַבִּים אַבִּירֵי בָשָׁן כִּתְּרוּנִי
Have beset me Bashan strong ones of, many bulls I am surrounded by
In reading this passage in Hebrew, the first problem encountered is in the second word “Parim”. This word, while usually translated bulls, is exactly the same spelling as the plural word for Fruit. The root for bulls is פרר (Pahrahr) meaning bulls and the root for fruit is פרי (Pree). The plural spelling for both words in the un-pointed text is פרים (pronounced Pahreem for bulls but Piryahm for fruit). Everywhere else in the Bible, in context, the word would be translated as fruit, as in the Hebrew phrase הגפן פרי (Pree HaGafen) fruit of the vine meaning wine, or as in fruit meaning children – פרים.
In the Brown, Driver, Briggs, the biblical Hebrew concordance, they say it means bulls here in Psalms 22 simply because it was translated as such by the KJV translators in a.d.1611 and other Jewish men such as Rashi in a.d.1040-1105. Why they translated this word as bulls and not fruit is known because if you translate פרים Piryam as Pahryam you have to have a modifier to go with it. The only modifier that looked as if it could go with this word is “Bashan” and so they simply stopped thinking right there. No other reason is proffered. While many elegant, but reaching exegeses, are written about these bulls in untold numbers of commentaries, in context in this passage it simply can’t mean bulls in Hebrew period. It just doesn’t fit the context at all.
So if it doesn’t mean bulls, but fruit, fruit meaning exactly what? In context, which is the only way to properly translate the Hebrew text, here in Psalms 22 we see references in verse 5 to the Fathers of Israel. In verse 10 we see references to the womb. In verse 23 we read about the brethren, those of Israel. And finally in verse 32 we see a reference to the unborn of Israel. Since the whole of Psalms 22 is dealing with those of the house of Israel who were seeking to kill King David, the fruit must be the offspring of the house of Israel, not anyone else from foreign countries nor any animal from Bashan, but only those who are acting like ravaging lions and wild dogs since that is the focus of the next verse.
Those ravaging lions happen to be used as an idiom for false teachers and false prophets of the house of Israel not Bashan and dogs are negatively portrayed in Judaism where they are mostly associated with violence and uncleanliness. Deuteronomy 23:18 appears to equate dogs with prostitution, and the Book of Kings describes dogs who feed on corpses. Psalms describes dogs as beasts that maul at human beings. Wild dogs are synonymous with licking the blood, eating vomit and eating the flesh of the dead and hunting and attacking in a pack as those hunting David clearly were. In Egypt the dog was associated with Anubis, the Jackal-headed dog of the underworld. Was David intimating that these evil men were followers of Anubis, otherwise known as HaSatan, the ruler of the underworld? We can’t be sure but we know the imagery is clear, these were bad people.
So now one can read the first part of the verse as saying, “I am hostilely surrounded by many offspring “of the house of Israel,””.
The second part of this passage begins with the Hebrew word אַבִּירֵי – Abeerey – strong ones “of” or “with” or “by” or “at” as the word is in the construct form that relates to the word following which is here translated as Bashan. However, this word “mighty or strong” is often referring to violent strong men as in Judges 5:22 and Job 24:22, 34:20 and here as enemies.
The word following Abeerey is Bashan, which is the key to deciphering this verse. Normally when we read Hebrew, we see the little points, dots, and dashes above and below and about the letters to help in the pronunciation. However, in old Hebrew there were no such points and often the letters were jammed together such that it was difficult for scribes to separate the words properly. These pronunciation aids of dots and dashes called the Nikud/Niqqud weren’t invented until the 7th century A.D. Often these words were written down by scribes and the letters got smudged or conjoined or translated and understood as the totally wrong words.
For example, the word Maranatha in our English bible means nothing. It was not a Greek word, nor is it an Aramaic word. The translators into Greek simply didn’t know what to do with two obscure Hebrew words that were in the text so they never translated them but they got conjoined into one meaningless word Maranatha. Only by understanding that this was MaRan Ata in Hebrew does it make sense. *1 By the time we go 2,000 years this meaningless word is still being parroted wrongly as meaning “Oh Lord come”.
This is exactly what we have here with Bashan. If this word was correctly separated into the two words that it should be, we would read it as Beh meaning With and Shin meaning Teeth.
Now, the last word of the verse is Kitrooni or “have beset me”. This word means to surround an enemy. Then this second part of the verse would read violent men, enemies with teeth have beset me “with the intention of killing me.”
So in reading this entire passage we should read it as follows, I am surrounded by many “evil” offspring “of the house of Israel”, violent enemies with teeth have beset me “with the intention of killing me.”
Understanding this verse now makes the rest of this whole chapter make sense.
Verse 12) Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
Verse 13) I am surrounded by many “evil” offspring “of the house of Israel”, violent enemies with teeth who have surrounded me with the intention of killing me.
Verse 14) They open wide their mouth against me, as a ravening and a roaring lion. (as false teachers)
Verse 15) I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is become like wax; it is melted in mine inmost parts.
Verse 16) My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my throat; and Thou layest me in the dust of death.
Verse 17) For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; (like a lion) they dug or pierced my hands and my feet.
When we read this passage in context it now changes focus from some random bulls of Bashan who are sneaking into Israel to trample people and trample Jesus on the cross or some random enemies from the east who are fat and sassy like bulls to the focus of the entire passage which is the evilness of the leaders of the house of Israel who have forsaken God and the poor, but that God will not forsake those who love him and will send the Messiah to declare his righteousness forever as the last verse states.
32) “They shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He (God) hath done it. (Notice that this word is not the Greek word tetelesthai meaning it is finished, but the Hebrew word Asah meaning he did it. God caused this all to come to pass, not that the OT is somehow finished.
If you think that this reading in 22:12/13 isn’t possible because mistakes aren’t made, in the Dead Sea Scrolls we find words in the text that were utilized there that no longer exist in the Hebrew Language or the Hebrew Bible. One such word happens to be in this very Psalm verse 16/17. It is the word pierced or dug at. In the Hebrew text of today we read the word כָּאֲרִי kaahri meaning “as a Lion” at my hands and feet. At Nachal Hever, one of the Qumran area caves, we found a manuscript that used a different word, כָּאֲרווּ Kaahru meaning “dug at or pierced” my hands and feet.
There is also another scrap from the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4Q88 f1-2, 2:24–25, which gives another variation, כרה – Karah – that was known by the scribes at Qumran and it has been transcribed by Eugene Ulrich as reading, ורגלי כרו ידי , Karu Yahdi veRagli “they pierced (כרה) my hands and my feet.
The Septuagint followed this text of Psalms as have most Bibles but not the Hebrew Masoretic text. This was the first time this particular word has been found and it is clearly a used variant spelling meaning dug at or pierced. Clearly “Christians” didn’t change this rendering as the Septuagint was composed by Jews ~250 years before Jesus was born. Clearly, one of the five Hebrew Old Testament texts in use at Qumran was extant in 250 B.C. *2
Some people may find issue with this interpretation in that it is possible to see the bulls of Bashan as simply a metaphor for violence that can be disassociated from Bashan as a territory of the Trans-Jordan tribes. You may read it this way in Amos 4:1 where the English uses it as a metaphor against Samaria. However, it could more easily be seen that my translation is correct and Amos should be seen as saying the enemies of God (false teachers) with teeth from Samaria that are trying to destroy the people. Amos was shortly before Isaiah so Isaiah could have borrowed this concept from Amos. Approximately 200 years later in Ezekiel 39:18 there is a reference to the fatlings of Bashan, but here the meaning of fat cows fits the context so there can be no doubt that this is the only way to read it. So how did we get from bad teachers seeking to destroy the people to fat cows? Was it just an accident of was it purposeful? We will probably never know.
Since David was beset by Ephraim and Jesus was beset by the house of Esau there is a large spiritual context to consider. There was a huge atmosphere of “lawlessness” in the day and to remove this concept of lawlessness from the Jewish leaders themselves, be it is the 8th century or in the 1st century, and push it onto these Bulls of Bashan in Trans-Jordan seems a disingenuous and problematic reading at the very least and it simply doesn’t fit the context nor events.
An example of the unpointed text of Psalms 22:12/13
22:13 סבבוני פרים רבים אבירי בשן כתרוני
*1 – https://discover.hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/Maranatha-Challenging-a-Textual-Error
*2 – https://torahresource.com/article/psalm-2216-like-a-lion-or-they-pierced/