Lord, Save Me from a Literal Dilemma! (Psalm 22:21)

Translators of “essentially literal” or “word-for-word” Bible translations, like the ESV and NASB, sometimes face a dilemma about whether to render the original text literally.

Let us take a look at how Psalm 22:21 is rendered in the ESV:

Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!

The footnote for “rescued” admits:

Hebrew answered.

Indeed, the Hebrew word for “rescued” is the verb ʿānāh (עָנָה), which means “to answer”. Therefore, a more accurate rendering of the verse would be:

Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have answered me from the horns of the wild oxen.

This rendering makes it seem as though the Lord had answered the psalmist by means of the horns of the wild oxen. However, in context, the more likely meaning is that the psalmist needed to be rescued from the horns of the wild oxen, just as he needed to be rescued from the mouth of the lion and the power of the dog (v. 20)! How should the verb ʿānāh in Psalm 22:21 be rendered so as to avoid this misunderstanding?

In the Hebrew text, the expression for “you have rescued me” is actually only one word: ʿăniyṯāniy (עֲנִיתָנִי). Because it is at the end of the verse, some think that ʿăniyṯāniy should be separated into a clause of its own. The NKJV reflects this view:

Save Me from the lion’s mouth.
And from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered Me.

However, this is a very unnatural way to read the Hebrew text. Because Psalm 22 is poetry, it is highly uncharacteristic that a clause would contain only one word in stark contrast to the rest of the verses in the psalm. Therefore, it is more reasonable to think that ʿăniyṯāniy belongs in the same clause as the previous words leading up to it.

Because of the potential problems with rendering ʿānāh in Psalm 22:21 as “to answer”, many essentially literal translations opt instead to render it by a verb of rescue, and leave a footnote informing the reader that the word really means “to answer”. Only the NASB renders ʿānāh in Psalm 22:21 in a more literal manner:

Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.

Because the translation is literal, the reader is shown what the Hebrew text actually says. However, this means that the responsibility falls to preachers and teachers to explain what the text means: God answered the psalmist’s plea for help by preventing him from being harmed by the horns of the wild oxen.