Psalms 22:16 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Dogs have compassed me So he calls his enemies, or rather the enemies of Christ, for their insatiable greediness, and implacable fierceness against him. The idea seems to be taken from a number of dogs encompassing a distressed deer, which they have hunted down, as is intimated in the remarks on the title. Hereby, Dr. Dodd thinks, are represented the Roman soldiers and the other Gentiles who were with the Jews around the cross. But without such a particular application, it may be interpreted generally of Christ's enemies, either consulting and conspiring against him, or assaulting him with violence. They pierced my hands and my feet These words cannot, with any probability, be applied to David, nor to the attempts of his enemies upon him; for their design was, not to torment his hands or feet, but to take away his life. And if it be pretended that it is to be understood of him in a metaphorical sense, it must be considered that it is so uncouth and unusual a metaphor that those who are of this opinion cannot produce any example of such a one, either in the Scriptures or in other authors; nor are they able to make any tolerable sense of the words thus understood. But what need is there of such forced interpretations, when this clause was most properly and literally verified in Christ, whose hands and feet were really pierced, and nailed to the cross, according to the manner of the Roman crucifixions? to whom therefore it is applied in the New Testament.