In the Dead Sea Scrolls(DSS) , in fragment 4QPs-f the word in question (Ka'ari) is not preserved... However in a second fragment HHev/Se 4(Ps) found at Nahal Hever the word is preserved.... The Nahal Hever manuscripts are Dated to the second century C.E. according to DSS scholars and researchers. This fragment shows the Letters Kaf-Aleph-Resh, and what appears to be an enlogated Yod which some perceive to be the letter Vav. Thus the rendering would be either Ka'ari or Ka'aru. The Latter has been the focus of much controversy and discussion, it is a fact of the matter that no root verb exists in the Hebrew language which contains an aleph in it, conjugated in this fashion(3rd person, plural masculine gender, past tense), with the meaning of "they pierced," as most christain translations render the word..
Without the letter Aleph , and using for a moment the argument that the last letter[the enlogated Yod] is a Vav, the word would be Kaf-Resh-Vav(Karu) for which the hebrew root is Karah which means "he dug[in dirt]," as in digging a trench(Psalm 57:7); in other words Karu does not have the meaning of piercing but that of "he dug [in dirt]." This verb is never used once in the Tanakh(Hebrew Bible) in the context of piercing in any of the 15 instances of it being used in the Hebrew Bible.
What could have caused such a variation between the two terms- Ka'ari and Ka'aru, i.e. the letter Yod being enlongated to resemble the letter Vav? the most plausable explanation would be that this is due to scribal error as in poor penmanship on the scribe's part, considering the linguistic analysis above and the fact that the word Ka'aru does not exist in the Hebrew language.
Another possibility is that given the late date on the fragments of Nahal Hever(2nd century C.E.) this may have prompted early christians to edit the original to read Ka'aru thus to make it resemble Karu, they dug. This would have accomplished the effect of aligning the word with the events of the early first century. What is also funny is that the Septuagint LXX version composed by the early church Father's Origen and Lucian, in Psalms 22:17 the reading of the Greek is Oruksan which stems from the word Orusso, which means "to dig" as in "dig a trench." according to An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon By Henry George Liddel they do not list this word as having the rendering of Pierced nor even come close to meaning pierced..
So can we safely say that the rendering of the Nahal Hever fragment was Ka'ari and not Ka'aru? with the Evidence presented above I would have to say that it is definately Ka'ari.
Also, with the evidence above presented we can see that the early christians may have been the ones editing the manuscript to read an non-existant hebrew word(Ka'aru) to resemble the word Karu meaning "he dug[a trench]." So with the argument presented we can safely say that the original rendering is without a doubt Ka'ari and not Ka'aru...
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