"Spirit of your Holiness" in Psalm 51:13

Trinity Journal, Spring 1998 by Marlowe, W Creighton

The second problem is that commentaries are not always clear as to whether God's "holy spirit" in Ps 51:13 is directly the person of the Holy Spirit present in David or indirectly a Holy Spirit-produced spiritual disposition in David. In the first instance David would have the Holy Spirit in mind as he wrote what modern editors would eventually name v. 13; but in the second case he would only be thinking of his own desire for holiness, which of course would be related to the work of the Holy Spirit of God in his life, theologically, but would not be the point he was making. If so, then the person of the Holy Spirit is not the issue at stake in v. 13, although by application the Spirit might be mentioned in the larger context of OT or biblical pneumatology.

III. EXEGESIS OF THE HEBREW TEXT OF PS 51:12-14

1..The understanding of (arabic text omitted) in Psalm 51 in the Versions and Commentaries

Due to these two interpretive complications, this section will combine a summary of the translational and interpretational problems in versions and commentaries and give emphasis to commentaries with translation.7

1. In Translations

In the twenty English translations or versions compared from 1611-1989,8 five variations in regard to capitalization in rendering

snl ni? appear: your/thy holy spirit; Thy holy spirit; your/thy holy Spirit; your/thy/Holy Spirit; and Thy Holy Spirit. The latter three clearly indicate the divine person and presence of the Holy Spirit. When commentary is involved even the first spelling is found to mean the same. Of these twenty, fourteen are Bible versions per se and the remaining six are commentaries in which the author provides a personal translation. Of the fourteen versions surveyed only four have "thy/your holy spirit": JB (1966); NAB (1969); NEB (1970); and NRSV (1989)-all within the last thirty years. The first two are Catholic, the third Anglican (British), and the fourth American. Of the six commentary translations, three have the lowercase phrase, which is, apart from context or comment, open to interpretation: Cohen in the Soncino Bible (1945),9 Oesterley (1953),10 and Dahood in the Anchor Bible (1968)11-respectively, Jewish, Anglican, and Catholic. The fourth, Westermann (1984, German edition), a continental Lutheran, uses the German equivalent of "thy holy Spirit" (rendering of his translator in 1989); but in German grammar this noun would normally be capitalized anyway. The meaning he attaches to it, however, is somewhat ambiguous.12 Leupold, fifth, an American, evangelical Lutheran (1959), uniquely uses capital letters for the full phrase and gives a translation of (arabic text omitted) (arabic text omitted) which seems unmistakable in its meaning: "Thy Holy Spirit."13 The sixth, Dickson (1653), offers a third variation with the use of capital letters: "thy Holy Spirit."14 While he follows the usual understanding of David's own personality as the subject of v. 12, he is the only one of these six to capitalize "spirit" in the translation he gives for both verses 13 and 14; and, as might be guessed, is the only other one to agree with Dahood's interpretation of the "spirit" in v. 14 as God's: "thy free Spirit."15