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NASB | James 4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"? |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | James 4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose that the [human] spirit which He has made to dwell in us lusts with envy? [Gen 6:5] |
Bible Question: This question is for the translators. With the lack of any comma in the phrase, it can easily be misinterpreted to suggest that God made the Holy Spirit, thus the Holy Spirit is not God. I understand that James' Greek was very cumbersome and not at all smooth. Can you provide a simpler explanation of what James was saying in this passage? Why not put a comma after Spirit and before which? What does he jealously desire the Spirit to do? |
Bible Answer: This verse is a pretty little problem all right, and you are obviously a person with keen observaton to notice it. As it reads in the NASB, it strikes me as ambiguous. It pains me to say that, because I hold this translation in extremely high regard. I'm afraid I can't agree that the insertion of a comma after Spirit would fix things. The sentence would still be murky. It really needs to be recast. Commas can be dangerous little critters. For example, suppose we insert a comma after "Spirit" and another after "made" -- wow! what a dramatic change in the dynamic occurs. We have cured the ambiguity, but we have changed the meaning. It now says something we know is not right. Another problem I see is that "Spirit" is capitalized (denoting Holy Spirit) but the relative pronoun that follows (and refers to Spirit) is "which" and not "whom", as it should be in modern English usage, if "Spirit" is understood to be the Holy Spirit A third problem with this verse is this: Is it Spirit or spirit -- Holy Spirit or man's spirit? I looked at other translatons. NKJV. like NASB, understands "Spirit", and so does the new Holman Christian Standard Bible. But NIV and the New English Bible render "spirit," as did the grand-daddy KJV...The verse is fairly clear in both the NKJV and the NIV; they have structured the sentence so as to eliminate possible ambiguity. The best exegesis I could find was John MacArthur's in his study Bible, published by Word: This difficult phrase is best understood by seeing the "spirit" as a reference not to the Holy Spirit, but to the human spirit, and translating the phrase "yearns jealously" in the negative sense of "lusts to envy." James' point is that an unbelieving person's spirit (inner person) is bent on evil. Those who think otherwise defy the biblical diagnosis of fallen human nature; and those who live in worldly lusts give evidence that their faith is not genuine....(MacArthur's note refers to the NKJV text)....You might wish to contact the Lockman Foundation with your question and I would urge you to do so, because I know that they value feedback from readers of the NASB and am confident they would welcome your questions and concerns. They give an address on their web site. which is Lockman.org. Not long ago, I posed a question to them about the translation of a verse in Ecclesiates, and they answered it thoroughly, scholarly, and even thanked me for asking! That's what we here in Arkansas call real nice folks...I see this is your first post, so welcome to the Forum. Good questions are welcome too, and yours was excellent. Drop by anytime and sit a spell! --Hank |