Lexicon

H1856 - daqar

Strong's: H1856 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: daw-kar' Part of speech: verb (primitive root) OT occurrences: 11

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

(Qal) to pierce, thrust through, stab, the primary sense; literal piercing with a sword, spear, or sharp instrument.
(Niphal) to be pierced through, stabbed, the passive of (1).
(Pual participle) pierced, riddled, run-through, perfect-passive sense.

The verb is concrete and physical: spear-thrusting, sword-thrusting, cavity-creating bodily wounding. It is the same word used of Phinehas's spear-thrust (Numbers 25:8), of Saul's request to be impaled by his armor-bearer (1 Samuel 31:4), and, most theologically loaded, of YHWH's prophetic statement in Zechariah 12:10.

Theological force, Zechariah 12:10 in NT use

The verb's most theologically critical occurrence is Zechariah 12.10:

Ve-hibittu elai et asher daqaru, "and they will look on Me whom they have pierced"

YHWH is the speaker (12:1, 4, YHWH declares throughout the chapter); YHWH is the Me; YHWH is the one pierced. The verse asserts:

A future event, eschatological "in that day" formula (12:9).
Israel's recognition, they will "look upon" Him, with consequent grief (12:10b).
The pierced one is YHWH, first-person me; the speaker has not changed.

This is theologically explosive in OT context: how can YHWH, incorporeal Spirit, transcendent God, be pierced? The verse seems to demand a future event in which YHWH Himself somehow becomes piercable.

NT use, John 19:37. The Apostle John, eyewitness to Jesus's crucifixion, explicitly cites Zechariah 12:10 of Christ:

"And again another Scripture says, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'" (John 19:37, NASB95)

John is asserting that the soldier's spear-thrust (John 19:34) into Jesus's side fulfilled Zechariah's daqar-prophecy. This requires the identification: the YHWH-speaker of Zechariah 12:10 is the crucified Christ. The Christological logic:

Zechariah 12:10's Me = YHWH (Hebrew context)
John 19:37's Him = Jesus (NT context)
Therefore: Jesus = the YHWH-speaker of Zechariah 12:10 = YHWH

This is one of the most direct OT-to-NT YHWH-Jesus identifications.

Revelation 1:7, also cites Zechariah 12:10:

"BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him."

The ascension parallel: at His second coming, those who pierced Him will see Him. The eschatological "look upon Me whom they pierced" finds its consummation in Christ's return.

Notable verses

Messianic / Christological, the "pierced" prophecy

Zechariah 12:10, vehibittu elai et asher daqaru, "they will look on Me whom they have pierced"
John 19:37, NT citation; fulfilled in Christ's crucifixion
Revelation 1:7, eschatological / parousia citation

Other piercing-language Christological texts (different Hebrew words)

Psalm 22:16, "they pierced my hands and feet" (Hebrew kaaru, disputed reading; LXX ōryxan "they pierced/dug")
Isaiah 53:5, "He was pierced through (mecholal, from H2490) for our transgressions"

Other OT daqar uses (literal piercing)

Numbers 25:8, Phinehas pierces both an Israelite and Midianite woman with a spear, ending the plague
Judges 9:54, Abimelech's request to his armor-bearer to pierce him so he won't be said to have died at a woman's hand
1 Samuel 31:4 / 1 Chronicles 10:4, Saul's request to his armor-bearer to pierce him through (refused, so Saul falls on his own sword)
Isaiah 13:15, "anyone who is found will be pierced"
Jeremiah 37:10, Babylonian soldiers wounded in battle
Lamentations 4:9, "those pierced by the sword"
Zechariah 13:3, false-prophet penalty

Patristic / scholarly note

Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 64; First Apology 52, c. AD 160) cites Zechariah 12:10 as one of the strongest single OT prophecies fulfilled in Christ. Tertullian (Against the Jews 14; Apology 21) and Cyprian (Testimonies Against the Jews 2.20) develop the same use. The verse is among the most-cited OT passages in early Christian-Jewish apologetic.

Modern apologetic, Michael Brown (Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3, 2003), develops the Hebrew-grammatical case for the YHWH-pierced reading against Jewish counter-readings (which try to revocalize elai "to me" as elaiv "to him", a reading not supported by the Masoretic text or the LXX).

The Septuagint of Zechariah 12:10 reads epiblepsontai pros me anth' hōn katōrchēsanto, "they will look upon Me because they have danced (mocked) [Me]", which differs from the Masoretic daqaru (pierced). Some critical scholars have used the LXX-divergence to question the Masoretic reading. However, the Theodotion / Symmachus / Aquila Greek revisions all use exekentēsan (pierced, same word John uses in John 19:37 quoting the verse), preserving the Masoretic sense; the Targum and the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm daqaru. The NT writers (John, Revelation) explicitly use exekentēsan, reading the Masoretic Hebrew in Greek translation. The Christian textual tradition treats the Masoretic daqaru as authoritative.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here.