the spirit of the man] within him? 2, 6). 11–14 God says that he will bring the people of Israel back to the land (i.e., out of their graves, vv. Namely, Moses would have his wish come true. There are some things that are completely new about the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament compared to the Old Testament. Moreover, the New Testament writers did not read the passage this way. The indwelling of the Spirit is, of course, metaphorical. 1–9) is by receiving the Spirit of God in our human “spirit” (v. 12–13; cf. In the Old Testament it is mentioned 23 times, but in a different form: “Ru•ach Adonai,” the Spirit of God. 2 Pet 1:21 cited above), the practice of “unceasing” prayer (1 Thess 5:17), loving involvement with other believers (see, e.g., the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:16, 22–24), giving witness in the world to the truth and effectiveness of the gospel (Acts 1:8), and so on. Although scarred by some non-conservative presuppositions and relatively light treatment of the Old Testament, this article is a very fine concise and well-documented discussion of the evidence regarding the Holy Spirit/holy spirit in the intertestamental and rabbinic sources as well as the New Testament. Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’” (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given [lit. The point is that we have trouble with this in the English versions precisely because in our language we do not see the natural link between “wind/breath” and “spirit” in the same way and to the same degree as the ancients did when they used the term ruakh. Related Topics: Pneumatology (The Holy Spirit), (B.A. In Ezek 39:29, the last verse of the section that includes Ezek 36–37, God uses the same expression to refer to his commitment to transform and restore Israel: “I will not hide my face from them any longer, when I pour out my spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.” There are other expressions used for the same thing, but they all associated this kind of Spirit-activity with the institution of prophecy. Moreover, the way we come to understand “the things that are freely given to us by God” by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ (v. 12b; cf. God the Holy Spirit breathed out the very Word of God. This combination of divine activities constitutes the regenerating and renewing of peoples’ hearts and lives about which both the Old and New Testaments speak.17 In Ezekiel’s terminology it changes the heart from a “heart of stone” to “a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26). esp. the term “Holy Spirit” in Isa 63:11–12 with “the Spirit of the Lord” in v. 14). See the helpful review of the debate in Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trans. John the Baptist came to prepare the people for the Messiah, and he did this through water purification, a baptism of repentance (John 1:24–28; cf. The same is true of God. Consider also the watery context in Exod 14:21–22, 29 where the Lord enabled Israel to cross the Reed Sea on dry ground by sending a strong east “wind” (ruakh) to drive the waters back. Paul’s other image of the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13 calls up another whole set of expressions in the Old Testament that serve as background for the New Testament teaching of the indwelling Holy Spirit. If the human spirit separates from the body, the body dies (to be resurrected later), but you still have the person in the form of his or her spirit. Toward the end of Ecclesiastes, at the climax and conclusion of the book, we find the same term used for the immaterial component of a person as opposed to the material in terms that recall Gen 2:7 (cited above): when a person dies “the dust [àafar] returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit [ruakh] returns to God who gave it” (Eccl 12:7; cf. All this is true also of the Spirit of God. 16 . For example, it can be treated as the seat of intuition (Mark 2:8), discouragement or internal despair (Mark 8:12), joy (Luke 1:47 // with “soul” in v. 46), intense affection (John 11:33), an internal sense of being in one form or another (2 Tim 1:7, a spirit of fear, as opposed to a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline), and so on. 3c, above, and parallel passage). The spirit is the person whether embodied or not. A valley of dry bones suggests not, but God has something to say about that. 1 (Waco: Word, 1987) 2, 16-17, where he translates “the Wind of God hovered” (note the capital W) and takes it to be “a concrete and vivid image of the Spirit of God.” As I see it, the main point is that even if “wind of God” were to be the best English rendering in Gen 1:2 (which is still very much in doubt), the expression still indicates that God was actively present in the primeval unformed and unfilled, deep and dark, watery abyss into which God spoke his creative words beginning in Gen 1:3. He writes: “we were all made to drink of the one Spirit.” There is a very real difference between using water for purification (i.e., baptism) and drinking it. ©2021 Jerusalem Prayer Team, all rights reserved. The nrsv translates “a wind from God swept over…” rather than the niv “the Spirit of God was moving over…,” reflecting both the ancient Near Eastern background in which cosmologies sometimes include wind in the creative process, and some translations and discussions in the history of interpretation of Gen 1:2.10 The rendering “wind of God” finds support in Gen 8:1b, where God “caused a wind to blow over the earth and the waters receded” after the waters of the flood had covered the earth. They allude to it on both communal and individual levels (see, e.g., 2 Cor 3:3–6 and, again, the personal individual remarks of Jesus to Nicodemus which so clearly draw upon Ezek 36). Similarly, like physical water, one can drink of the Spirit as water that gives life to the human spirit (e.g., John 7:37-39). The coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives today brings with it the accomplished work of Christ in his life, death, burial, and resurrection. 2 . As Christians we insist that we too believe in only one God (we are monotheists), but articulate this in terms of the tri-unity of the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Trinity (see, for example, the baptismal formula in Matt 28:19, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”). If one of the explicitly biblical perspectives from which to approach an understanding of the Holy Spirit of God is through comparison and contrast with the human spirit of people, then another is through the nature and effects of “wind.” We have already referred to several passages in the Old Testament where ruakh means “wind.” Conceptually, “wind” is closely related to “breath,” since they both involve the movement of air, and both of them are closely related to “spirit” because if a person stops “breathing” their life “expires” and the person’s body gives up their “spirit.” In turn, “spirit” also sometimes refers to that which constitutes the unique nature of a particular person—their individual personal vitality and personality, character, dispositions, and so forth. “The Spirit of God/the Lord” occurs only about 25 times, but “(Holy) Spirit” over 150 times. For those readers who know Greek, the grammar of the expressions for “the spirit of the man” and “the Spirit of God” in v. 11 are exactly the same. On the one hand, it seems difficult to suggest that regeneration could take place in the Old Testament without the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer. The implications of all these images are not always clear in the Old Testament, and sometimes not even in the New Testament in certain places, but they are there nevertheless. A Lasting Legacy: Choosing A Wife For Isaac (Gen. 24:1-67). 12 . Three points in this passage are especially important to our present discussion. The Holy Spirit now can bring all this to bear upon us, and that is his very purpose as Paul observes in 1 Cor 2:12. We are not. 14 . In the latter sense, the term also applies to the Spirit of God. As a human person’s spirit can be grieved, so can the Spirit of God who dwells in our human spirit and among us (see more on the matter of “indwelling” later in this essay). He inhabits our human spirit, which is immaterial by nature, just as God is (John 4:24). For women, the significance is that the ruach Elohim of Genesis 1:2 is a feminine noun accompanied with a feminine-ending verb form, m’rechephet. We need to take this biblical analogy seriously in both understanding the nature of God’s Spirit and in welcoming and engaging with his work. The word spirit (from the Latin spiritus meaning "breath") appears either alone or with other words in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. The first occurrence is in Ps 51:11[13], when David prays in penitence to the Lord, “Do not reject me! This combination of wind, breath, and spirit extends also into the New Testament where its importance for understanding of the Spirit of God is maintained. Thus, the “spirit of God hovering” is a metaphorical allusion to the feminine in God. Of course, in the Jewish tradition the Holy Spirit referred to in the Hebrew Bible is not taken to be the third person of the “Trinity,” so in such passages the Hebrew word is translated “spirit,” not capitalized “Spirit.”4 In general, the Jewish view is that “the spirit of God referred to in the Bible alludes to His energy (Isa 40:13; Zech 4:6).”5 Accordingly, it is recognized that “the divine origin of the spirit” is implied by the term “his (the Lord’s) spirit of holiness” (ovd+q* j^Wr, ruakh qadesho), “Yet this does not mean that the holy spirit was regarded as a hypostasis distinct from the divine presence (shekina).”6 In other words, according to the Rabbis, although the “spirit of God” is of divine origin, this does not mean that there is a “Holy Spirit” as a divine person. The longer answer is that Hebrew … Here in Israel the Hebrew name for the spirit of YHVH is Ruach HaKodesh.Lets take a look at what those Hebrew words mean. 19–21). Similarly, the “Spirit” of God knows the deep things of God (v. 10b), that is, his thoughts (v. 11b). The spiritual number 3 means ^Truth _ or God. 5 . As many have observed, the verb “carried along” (Greek ferovmenoi [pheromenoi] from the verb fevrw [phero„]) is the same verb as that used for a boat being “driven along” by the wind in Acts 27:15. If we understand the idea of God, especially the Holy Spirit, being like a breath or wind, we can grasp the meaning of the Hebrew word “Ruach.”. This, of course, is the essence of putting “a new [human] spirit within [the midst of]” them (v. 26). It continues through continuing attentiveness to God in our lives on various levels and in all sorts of ways, including, for example, the serious study of the scriptures that the Spirit himself “inspired” (see 2 Tim 3:16, “Every scripture is inspired by God [God-breathed (qeovpneusto", theopneustos)]”; cf. This word also means “wind.”. Clearly, according to Paul there is no being a Christian without being “baptized by the Holy Spirit.” As he puts it in 1 Cor 12:13, “for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Walk in His Word today and every day. Water is mentioned first because purification from impurity and infidelity is the necessary environment for revival of the heart and spirit of people by the work of God’s Spirit. This brings us to the Holy Spirit’s “indwelling” of believers. v. 10a). 2–4). In the non-Hebraic languages the word “holy” is an adjective describing the word “spirit”, i.e. 7). Thus, almost 40% of the time ruakh refers to the literal movement of air in: (1) natural weather (e.g., Gen 3:8; 1 Kgs 18:45; Ps 1:4; Eccl 1:6, 14, etc. Some would extend the argument back to the whole Old Testament period as well, although it is difficult to understand how this makes sense in light of Ezek 36:27, “I will put my Spirit within you,” unless one makes it to be entirely eschatological into the future beyond the restoration from the captivity (see the problem with this approach discussed above), or exclusively collective, referring to God putting the Holy Spirit “in the midst of” Israel as a nation, not “within” individuals. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 3.1073-1078 and the literature cited there. “ Ruach Elohim ” refers to the Spirit of God, and it is mentioned in Genesis 1:2 as there, in the beginning, hovering over the waters as God created the heavens and the earth from the empty, formless darkness ( Genesis 1:1-2 ). Moreover, like in the Old Testament, the “spirit” is the seat of human character as well as capacities and dispositions. The Lord promised to put his “spirit within [the midst of]” them and thereby move them to follow the Lord’s covenant law (v. 27). The term “Holy Spirit” actually occurs only three times in the Hebrew Bible. THE YEAR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The idea of “breath” is completely integral to the human experience. it likewise can refer to spirit/Spirit, wind, or breath .] First, the Lord promised to “cleanse” the nation from their all their “impurities” and “idols” by sprinkling (actually “splashing”) the people with “pure water.” Second, the Lord promised to change their human spirit by putting within them “a new spirit.” Thus, he will change their “heart” from being hard like stone (non-responsive) to being soft like human flesh and, therefore, responsive to God’s touch. God is the one “who forms the human spirit within a person” (Zech 12:1), so it naturally returns to him at death. Interestingly, Mark 15:37 puts it this way: “And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last” (Greek ejxevpneusen [exepneusen]; note the root pneuma [“spirit”] in this verb). It has a strong connection to the Holy Spirit: the third person in the Trinity. The following are good places to begin: Leon J. The aspect (hypostasis) of the Trinity or Godhead corresponding to divine essence present in the faithful (particularly inspired prophets) and considered to proceed either from ( Eastern Orthodoxy) God the Father alone or ( Roman Catholicism) from Him together with God the Son. The metaphor takes the idea of purification of the human body through physically washing with water and extends it to purification of the human spirit through spiritual washing with the Holy Spirit. What was New about the Christian Experience of God?” Ex Auditu 12 (1996) 14-28; Block, “The Prophet of the Spirit,” 40-41; and Fredricks, “Rethinking the Role of the Holy Spirit in the Lives of Old Testament Believers,” 81-104. holy spirit translation in English-Hebrew dictionary. Shab. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 3.264. At least on one level it seems most natural that since “the spirit of man” fits his nature as human, similarly, “the Spirit of God” fits God’s nature as divine. An Investigation into the Ministry of the Spirit of God Today. He is invisible and like wind, because He can be felt or experienced, but not seen. Where is the one who placed his [H]oly Spirit among them…. We have already observed that, as a motif, “baptism” in (with, or by) the Holy Spirit is new in the New Testament, but we have also seen that it is based on the combination of divine promises in Ezek 36:25–28. The well-known vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezek 37:1–14 begins with “the Spirit of the Lord” transporting the prophet to the valley (v. 1).12 Of course, the dry bones represent the house of Israel as a whole, and the real question is whether or not there was any hope for Israel in the future (v. 11). vv. The point of Joel 2 as well as Peter’s quotation of it in Acts 2 is that there will be a difference in the last days (i.e., the days since Pentecost). “Pouring out” of the Spirit (like water) is associated, therefore, with the prophetic activity of the Old Testament. Some of this is new in some ways in the New Testament, but the foundations for them are laid in the Old Testament. His people remembered the ancient times. If we use this concept when interpreting the word holy in the Hebrew Bible, then we are misreading the text, as this is not the meaning of the Hebrew word qadosh. See, e.g., Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” 149-156; Gary Fredricks, “Rethinking the Role of the Holy Spirit in the Lives of Old Testament Believers,” Trinity Journal 9 NS (1988) 81-84; Van Pelt, Kaiser, and Block, “j~Wr, ru‚ah,” 1076-1077; and Wood, The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, 16-22 and 64-77. Meaning- The Holy Spirit will counsel us and teach us as we grow in … Jesus was as fully human as he was divine. “ears are uncircumcised”]; 9:25–26; Ezek 44:7). John’s ministry continued along this line of “ceremonial washing,” over which disputes sometimes also arose between John’s disciples and other Jews (see, e.g., John 3:25).15. also “aspiration,” etc. The second point is related to the first. This is especially the case regarding whether or not the Holy Spirit indwelt Old Testament believers like he does New Testament believers (for the latter see especially Rom 5:5, 8:9; 11, 1 Cor 2:12; 6:19–20; Gal 4:6; 1 John 3:24; 4:13). 9, end; comp. 4:4-7), Who's Afraid of the Holy Spirit? But much of what is there in the New Testament already has its roots sunk deep into the soil of the Old Testament. F. W. Horn, “Holy Spirit,” translated by Dietlinde M. Elliott in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. The term "Holy Spirit" ( pneuma [ pneu'ma] hagion [ a&gion ]) becomes common, although the absolute use remains frequent and "Spirit of God/the Lord" and even "Spirit of Christ" appear too. However, translating “the Spirit of God” corresponds to the focus on God “speaking” (i.e., “breathing out” his pronouncements) throughout the chapter. NAS: and in whom is a spirit of the holy KJV: of my god, and in whom [is] the spirit of the holy INT: of my god whom spirit gods of the holy. A Lamp. This is his promised response: I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities; I will purify you from all your idols. See James K. Hoffmeier, “Some Thoughts on Genesis 1 & 2 and Egyptian Cosmology,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies 15 (1983) 44 and the literature cited there favoring “the wind of God.” For mediating somewhere between the two positions see Kenneth A Matthews, Genesis 1-11:26, New American Commentary, vol. Jesus had once again used a water motif to speak of “the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” John adds further, “For the Spirit had not yet been given [lit. The connection between “wind” and “breath” seems natural to us even today and appears, for example, in our common expression for having the “wind [actually the ‘breath’] knocked out” of a person (through a physical “blow” of some kind). 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