Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit
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Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit

Trevor J. Burke

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eBook - ePub

Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit

Trevor J. Burke

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About This Book

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this is the first comprehensive exploration of the role and work of the Holy Spirit, as witnessed in both the Old and New Testaments. With contributions by Craig Bartholomew, Gary Burge, David deSilva, James D. G. Dunn, David Firth, Walter Kaiser, Wonsuk Ma, John Christopher Thomas, Max Turner and Matthias Wenk, among others, this authoritative survey will rapidly establish itself as a standard reference point for scholars and students of all theological persuasions. Any attempt at a 'biblical theology' must begin with a careful exegesis of the biblical text. To this end, each contributor address the text through a rigorous exegesis of pertinent passages, keeping in mind the genre, canonical contexts and sweep of redemptive history.

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Year
2014
ISBN
9780281066285
1
The Pentateuch
WALTER C. KAISER JR
Introduction
The complete term for the Holy Spirit only occurs in its full form in the Hebrew Bible three times: Psalm 51.11 (13), where David prayed for forgiveness after his sin with Bathsheba, ‘Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me’,1 and in Isaiah 63.10, 11, where the Israelites had grieved the Holy Spirit by rebelling against him. Later, in this same context (63.14), this same Holy Spirit is referred to under the preferred shortened title of ‘the Spirit of God’. According to Averbeck,2 ‘Spirit’ occurs about 94 times with that personal reference to the third person of the Trinity, out of the 378 occurrences of the Hebrew term ruach with its associated references to ‘wind’ and ‘breath’. Hildebrandt came up with slightly different numbers, finding 389 references to the Spirit of God in the OT, mainly with the term ruach, but of these, approximately 107 refer to the activity of God as Spirit,3 other meanings including ‘wind’ and ‘breath’.
The complete revelation of the triunity of the one God of Scripture is not revealed until later in the biblical text, but there are certainly earlier intimations of the fact that the unity of the Godhead came in a Trinitarian form. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all equally and eternally no less than the one God who had no rivals and was sovereign over all. Usually the deity of the Holy Spirit is not denied, but more often there is doubt about the personality of the Holy Spirit. Jewett offers a case for the personality of the Holy Spirit, writing:
The Hebrews, it would seem, spoke of God in this way because they conceived of him in his essential being as the invisible Power (Energy) behind all that is, the creative Breath by which the living creature, indeed the whole universe, is animated. Yet in the context of the Old Testament as a whole it is evident that this animating Power, this creative Breath, is not understood as an impersonal force but rather as a living subject. The personal Energy which God is in himself, the Breath by which he calls the worlds into being (Ps. 33.6), is, in the first instance, the Energy by which God wills to be who he is. He is who he is by his own act; that is, his being is personal being, being that can be understood only as a self-determined ‘self’ and ‘I’.4
In analysing the distribution of the occurrences of ruach in the Pentateuch, there are 38 appearances of this term with none in Leviticus. That would mean that, in six key teaching passages in the first five books of the OT, we are given a description of the work of the Holy Spirit in the earliest days of Scripture. The first, of course, is the work of the Spirit of God in creation in Genesis 1.2. This is followed rather quickly by the narrative of God’s breathing into the nostrils of Adam the ‘breath of life’ in Genesis 2.7, which breath of life, in this case, turns out to be closely related to the Spirit of God. The third instance where we find the Spirit of God is in Genesis 6.3, where the Spirit operates as a Judge over the sins of a reprobate society prior to Noah’s flood. The fourth is located in the example of the first person who is called ‘wise’ in the Bible, namely, Joseph. Because he was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, Pharaoh himself asked the question, ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God?’ (Gen. 41.38). Joseph confirmed this gift of wisdom by his own dreams and the dreams of others, along with their correct interpretations, which came, not from his own abilities, but from none other than the living God of the whole universe.
A fifth instance of the use of the Spirit of God is in Numbers 11.4–30. The key text to examine in this context will be Numbers 11.25, which the New International Version (NIV) translates as:
Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him [Moses], and he took . . . the Spirit that was on him and put [the Spirit] on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied – but did not do so again [or: ‘prophesied and continued to do so’].
The final passage concerns the prophet Balaam, son of Beor, who lived in Pethor, near the Euphrates River in Upper Mesopotamia (Num. 22.5). He was hired by Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, to put a curse on the huge assembly of Israelites that had emerged out of the desert near his borders. However, contrary to the wishes of the Moabite king Balak, Balaam, moved by the Holy Spirit, repeatedly blessed Israel, which is exactly what was stated about him on one of those occasions in Numbers 24.2: ‘When Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the Spirit of God came on him.’ These six passages, then, will form the basis of our examination of the Holy Spirit and his work in the days when the first five books of the Bible were given to Moses.
The Holy Spirit in the work of creation (Gen. 1.2)
The first mention of the ‘Spirit of God’ in Scripture comes immediately in the second verse of the Bible, Genesis 1.2: ‘and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’. This clause was one of three nominal clauses that described an early stage of God’s work in bringing the earth into existence; the other two were: ‘Now the earth was formless and empty’ and ‘darkness was over the surface of the deep’. The opening verse of Genesis 1.1, however, begins by giving an absolute beginning to the whole universe as it simply, but majestically, announces: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Since the Hebrew Bible does not have a separate Hebrew word for the concept of the ‘universe’, it uses the figure of speech known as hendiadys, in which the two words of ‘heaven and earth’ are used to accomplish the same single concept of the ‘universe’.
Verse 2 begins with a statement about the earth in particular, for it quickly narrows down the focus of the area to be discussed (rather than dealing with the whole universe at large) as the scope of its concerns, by saying that before God began to announce each of his nine declarations (‘And God said’) for all that was to come into existence and being on earth, the terrestrial globe on which we now live was the focus of his attention. But we immediately notice how things began to take place under the creative hand of God. It all began with the Hebrew expression tohu wa vohu, perhaps better translated as ‘empty and vacant’. The connotation of tohu as a desert waste comes in a number of passages (Deut. 32.10; Job 6.18; 12.24), but in other passages it speaks of a total devastation (Isa. 24.10; 34.11; 40.23; Jer. 4.23). In this latter group of texts, God threatens that he is able to bring a complete reversal to the original created state of the earth, because of human disobedience, by returning it to a state of emptiness and chaos. Cassuto5 renders this term as the unformed, unorganized and lifeless state which was present prior to God’s completion of his Creation.
Of course, it had never been God’s intention to create the earth merely to have it remain ‘empty’ or ‘vacant’, for as Isaiah 45.18c noted, God ‘formed it to be inhabited’. Thus, even while for the moment, ‘Darkness was [also] over the surface of the deep’, that too would change, as Jeremiah 4.23, 28 indicated:
I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone . . . Therefore the earth will mourn and the heavens above grow dark, because I have spoken and will not relent, I have decided and will not turn back.
All this implied that God could not only eradicate the emptiness and vacancies on the earth, but he could make the heavens glow with light from his hand just as well. However, when the sovereign Lord brought judgement for the sin of mortals, he was just as able to send it back into its pre-formative status once again.
For over a century now, too many have followed the lead that Gunkel6 gave, when he compared the Hebrew term tehom, ‘deep’, with the Babylonian goddess Tiamat, and claimed the Hebrew derivation came from the Babylonian myth. This suggestion, however, has been thoroughly discredited by scholars such as Heidel, mainly on philological grounds and because the Hebrew term is well established in Hebrew and Ugaritic as referring to a sea or a large body of water.
It was at this point that ‘the Spirit of God’ (Hebrew, ruach ’elohim) ‘was hovering over the waters’. How, then, may we best translate this Hebrew expression: will we say ‘a mighty wind’, ‘a divine wind’, ‘a wind from God’, or should we render it as the ‘Spirit of God’? The debate on this point has often been strong in the last century and a half. I recall how my professor, Dr Harry Orlinsky, related to my graduate doctoral class at Brandeis University in 1960 his experience of being the only Jewish person on the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translation team back around 1950. He said that, early on, the team spent one whole day arguing over whether Genesis 1.2 was to be rendered as a ‘mighty wind’ or as the ‘Spirit of God’. When the translators finally took a vote at the end of the day, it came out eight to seven in favour of ‘Spirit’. However, Dr Orlinsky was unhappy with that result, for he had argued that Genesis was dependent on the Babylonian creation story, called the Enuma elish, where there were eight winds present, so it should be rendered in a similar way in the RSV translation of Genesis 1.2, since he assumed there was some type of literary dependence of the Hebrew narrative on the Babylonian myth. But those ‘winds’ in the Babylonian story, it should be carefully noted, were all evil winds; furthermore, there was little else to commend any evidence of literary dependency by the Bible on the Babylonian story. Add to those arguments that ’elohim is used consistently through this passage as the name for God, and not as an intensifying adverb, such as ‘mighty’, giving the incorrect rendering of ‘mighty wind’.
God ‘was hovering’7 (Hebrew, merahephet) over the surface of the deep. This word is a Hebrew piel participle that stresses continuous action. It is used in this form in only one other place in the Bible, and that is Deuteronomy 32.11, to describe the care with which an eagle ‘hovers over’ her young brood to train them how to fly. This same verbal word (rhp) with a similar usage appears in the earliest Canaanite alphabetic script, called Ugaritic, which also speaks of the soaring abilities of a vulture. The picture from these birds, then, is of the Holy Spirit ‘hovering over the waters’ (Gen. 1.2), just as God brought his people in a similar way through the wasteland of the desert. The teaching found here in Genesis 1.2 is that it was God himself who brought the creative power of the work of the Holy Spirit to show order, design and functionality to an earth that emerged at its first appearance as ‘empty and vacant’.
It was Gunkel who had promoted the theory that what was pictured here was a world egg which was ‘brooded over’ until it hatched! However, that theory has also suffered criticism over time, and the analogy of an eagle using her wings to teach her young how to fly has provided the preferred picture of protection and care that came from the Holy Spirit in the creative process (Deut. 32.11).
Rea points to several other biblical texts that show a similar work of God’s care in continuing to protect and providentially oversee all of Creation,8 referring to Isaiah 31.5, ‘Like birds hovering overhead, the LORD Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will “pass over” it and will rescue it.’ He also notes Psalm 68.33–35 (NIV1984): ‘To him [God] who rides the ancient skies above, who thunders with mighty voice. Proclaim the power of God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the skies. You are awesome, O God.’
By the time we come to the New Testament (NT), we are astonished to see the same analogies being used for God’s ‘hovering’ presence and unique care that occurred at the time of the announcement by the angels at the birth of Jesus: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’ (Luke 1.35 NIV1984). The Greek word for ‘overshadow’ is episkiazƍ, which Rea observes is the same word the LXX of Exodus 40.35 used to describe God’s glory cloud covering the tabernacle, and the Greek word also used of the cloud that was the ‘overshadowing presence at the Mount of Transfiguration’ (Matt. 17.5; Mark 9.7; Luke 9.34). Thus, the same figure of speech was used for the overshadowing presence and care of the Holy Spirit, whether it was at the creation of the earth, the conception of the incarnate Christ, or the magnificent appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration.
The creation of humankind by the divine breath (Gen. 2.7)
Genesis 2.7 may be paraphrased: ‘And Yahweh God, as a Potter, moulded the first human, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (hayyim).’ This verse uses the word neshmah as a synonym for ruach, which, in this context, means the animating principle of life itself. God’s ‘breath’ is his gift that started life and respiration (Job 34.14; 36.4; Isa. 2.22). However, it was not only humankind that received the ‘breath of life’ (ruach hayyim) from God, but so did ‘every living creature’ (Gen. 6.17; 7.15 and nishmat ruach, Gen. 7.22). Animals, birds and creeping things were also called ‘living creature(s)’ (Hebrew, nephesh hayyim), but again, only humans are said to be in God’s image (cf. Job 26.4; 27.3; Isa. 42.5).
The distinction between humankind and all the other breathing creatures was that humans had the divine breath directly breathed into them by God. Furthermore, God shared his image and likeness with humankind, but this feature was not shared with the animals. Since God also was spirit, the breath breathed into Adam was more than mere physical breath; it was also spiritual breath. Accordingly, when humans die, the dust of their bodies returns back to the earth from ...

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