What the texts say. The Masoretic Hebrew (Psalm 40:7 in Hebrew numbering, 40:6 in English Bibles) says, literally, “ears you have dug for me.” The KJV renders it “mine ears hast thou opened.” The Septuagint (Psalm 39:7 in its numbering) says “a body hast thou prepared me.” Hebrews 10:5–7 quotes the Greek and places the words on the lips of Christ “when he cometh into the world.” That Hebrews matches the Septuagint as we have it is certain (Very Strong).
What “ears dug” means. The Hebrew phrase is unusual; this is the only place where “dig” and “ears” are joined. Most readers take it to mean an ear opened to hear and obey. The point of the psalm is that God wants obedience more than sacrifice, and the next verses say so: “I delight to do thy will.”
Where did “a body” come from? This is debated (Debated). The great Greek codices, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, read “body,” and so does the Greek text Brenton used. But Alfred Rahlfs’s Göttingen edition of the Greek Psalms prints ōtia, “ears,” as the original Greek, in line with the Old Latin and with the Latin psalter that St Jerome revised from the Greek of Origen’s Hexapla, around 386–389, which reads aures, “ears.” That psalter became the psalter of the Clementine Vulgate, so the Catholic Douay-Rheims reads “thou hast pierced ears for me” in the Psalm, while its Hebrews 10:5 reads “a body thou hast fitted to me.” Some scholars think Hebrews followed a Greek text that already read “body.” Others, such as Michael Graves, think the Old Greek read “ears” and the great codices were later brought into line with Hebrews. Others, such as Karen Jobes, argue that the author of Hebrews adapted a Greek reading “ears.” Still others think both readings circulated. No one can settle this from the evidence now available.
What the Orthodox Church reads. The Orthodox Church prays the Psalter in the Septuagint, so its Psalm 39 reads “a body hast thou prepared me,” in agreement with Hebrews. This is one of the clearest places where the Apostolic writings quote the Greek Old Testament rather than the Hebrew wording.
How translations handle it. Translations of the Psalm made from the Hebrew, such as the KJV, the Reina-Valera and the Jewish JPS version, speak of ears; Hebrews, translated from the Greek, speaks of a body. Readers who compare the two in an English Bible are not seeing an error by a translator but two ancient forms of the text.
What it does and does not change. The Church’s faith in the Incarnation does not hang on this verse; it is confessed throughout the New Testament (John 1:14). Hebrews uses the Greek wording to make a point that the Hebrew also supports: the offering God desires is perfect obedience. Hebrews adds that this obedience was carried out in a human body, “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). The two readings differ in wording, not in the direction of their meaning.