Retrofit

Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.  Psalm 51:11  NASB

Your Holy Spirit – Well, if you wanted a prooftext for the Trinitarian view of the third person of the Godhead, you probably would include this verse from David.[1]  After all, if David acknowledged the “Holy Spirit,” how could anyone who holds the Bible as sacred deny this claim?  But before we look at the Hebrew text, let’s not forget what we investigated yesterday, namely, the idea of “person.”  Do you realize that the concept of the Trinity as three “persons” in one Being could not have occurred in Hebrew?  Why?  Because the idea of an ontological entity called “person” is Greek.  The concept relies on Hellenism in order to even exist.  If the Hebrew concept of who we are is anchored in what God knows us to be by intent, then how would it be possible to suggest that multiple “persons” apply to God Himself?  Doesn’t He also know who He is?  And knowing who He is, if we are to draw an analogy from who we are, is all that is required to be.  [It gets a lot more complicated, but this is enough to think about right now].

But we digress.  The phrase we’re interested in here is rû^aḥ qôdš^ekā’ (from rûaḥ – wind, breath and qādaš – to hallow, holy).  Notice how Chabad translates the verse:

Do not cast me away from before You, and do not take Your holy spirit from me.

Anything different?  Ah, the absence of capital letters in “holy spirit.”  This is not simply Jewish anti-Trinitarian theology.  Think about the meaning of rû^aḥ qôdš^ekā’ with regard to life itself, for that is what David is wrestling with.  We are animated by God’s breath.  We are alive, and not just the dust of the ground, because rû^aḥ qôdš^ekā’ enlivens us.  Without it, we are dead!  It’s not just that we could exist without a spiritual connection to God, as if the presence of the “Holy Spirit” is some additional religious element we can appropriate.  In Hebrew thought, it is God’s animating force that gives life itself.  If I plead for God not to take away that animating force, I am, in effect, pleading for God to let me live!  This has absolutely nothing to do with a “third person of the Trinity” named “the Holy Spirit.”  That is a theological construct retrofitted into the text.  David is asking that his crime not be treated as a capital offense, even though it should be.  

We might want to look at a prior use of the phrase rû^aḥ qôdš^ekā’ in its root form.  We find it in Genesis 1:2: “the spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.”  “Ruach is described as a wind (for example, in Numbers 11:31 and Exodus 10:13), but also as spirit (in Judges 6:34, 1 Samuel 16:14 and 1 Kings 18:12). And then, in Job it is translated as breath (12:10).”[2]  With this in mind, why do you suppose this author and others choose to interpret Psalm 51:11 as a proof for “The Holy Spirit,” rather than the simpler, and less theological, animating force, as exemplified in other uses of the term? Could it be that the theological construct actually determines the exegesis rather than the other way around?  After all, Chabad uses exactly the same English but clearly does not view the terms as an indication of a divine “person.”  Why don’t we start by asking, “What is David’s psalm all about?” and determine the meaning of the terms on the basis of the intent of the poem?  We might discover that David faces capital punishment at the hand of the Lord, and his petition isn’t theological.  It’s very, very practical.

Topical Index: Holy Spirit, rû^aḥ qôdš^ekā’, Trinity, person, Genesis 1:2, Psalm 51:11