Our translation says:
Nail down my body...
Many ‘Church Fathers’ quoted these words as a Messianic Prophecy, although they used the words ‘fasten my flesh with nails’. Jesus was, of course, impaled on the lumber by having nails driven down into his flesh, before being raised up.
The word that we translate as “nail down” is a single Greek verb (action word), Καθήλωσον/Kathēlōson, which is made up of:
- καθ- / kath- = An inflection of κατα, a prefix which means “against” or “fully” or “downwards”.
- -ἧλος- / -(h)elos- = a noun meaning a nail.
- -ον = an inflective word ending that can be nominative, accusative, or imperative. We assume it’s an imperative – making the word a command to someone else.
So it’s a compound word, coming together to form a verb.
The Hebrew sources, however, say something completely different in this verse:
My flesh trembles in fear of you –NIV
Indeed, the passage as a whole is different, with different inflections referring to different persons.
On the surface, this seems fine. After all, we know that many Messianic Prophecies were changed or removed in the Hebrew Text in later times. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls vindicates the Christians, as these pre-Christian documents include many of the Messianic Prophecies (and other wording) which were scrubbed by the early Rabbis.
So surely this must be just another one of them, right? Well, not necessarily...
Firstly, the Dead Sea Scrolls which contain this verse are dated to before the Christian Era and they read just like the Hebrew text does today – they don’t contain this Messianic Prophecy!
Secondly, we can’t defer to an Apostle for the answer, as these words are not quoted in the Christian books – which may seem strange in itself, as it’s very specific and graphic.
Thirdly, some Koine Greek experts today disagree with translating the word as “nail down” and believe it means something like “cast me down”.
So this text is in dispute. We can’t be sure that it is a Messianic Prophecy. So what is our reason for assuming that it is a prophecy? Well, it was widely believed to be so by the so-called ‘Church Fathers’ – and they were often native speakers of Koine Greek who lived in the ancient era. We can’t just dismiss their opinion. Augustine of Hippo even wrote about how to correctly translate the word for “nail down” into Latin.
So in our translation, we defer to these native speakers. However, they (and we) could be wrong.