The Holy Spirit in Writing the Old Testament

Scripture  Reading: 2 Peter 1:12-21

Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

¹² For this reason, I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you already have. ¹³ And I consider it right to keep stirring you up with reminders, as long as I am in the tent of this body. ¹⁴ I know that I will soon lay aside this tent of mine, as our Lord Yeshua the Messiah has made clear to me. ¹⁵ And I will do my best to see that after my exodus, you will be able to remember these things at all times.
¹⁶ For when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, we did not rely on cunningly contrived myths. On the contrary, we saw his majesty with our own eyes. ¹⁷ For we were there when he received honor and glory from God the Father; and the voice came to him from the grandeur of the Sh’khinah, saying, “This is my son, whom I love; I am well pleased with him!” ¹⁸ We heard this voice come out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.
¹⁹ Yes, we have the prophetic Word made very certain. You will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark, murky place, until the Day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts. ²⁰ First of all, understand this: no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted by an individual on his own; ²¹ for never has a prophecy come as a result of human willing — on the contrary, people moved by the Ruach HaKodesh spoke a message from God -Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

Key Verse: but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter¹ :21b).

Meditation: Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament were produced by the mere heightening of man’s intellectual or spiritual powers. Nor were they written by the direct dictation of God into the ears of the writers. The first method would reduce the Bible only to the best that man can produce and strip it of its unique supernatural character. The “dictation theory” would completely eliminate the differences in style we find, for example, between the writings of Paul and Peter or between Mark and John.

We believe that the writing of the Scriptures indicates both a passive and active side. As for the content of Scripture itself, we are convinced that the will of the Holy Spirit, not the will of man, determined what was to be written. We are confident that nothing of essential importance was omitted. In other words, all that the church needs to know has already been recorded for us. Peter uses the expression regarding prophecy “they were actively carried by the Holy Spirit as they spoke.” The Holy Spirit was the divine source for what was spoken. Paul uses the expression “All Scripture is God-breathed...”

As God spoke to and through human authors, yet He did not bypass or violate their personalities. They each responded to the content of revelation and recorded it in their own vocabulary and through the uniqueness of their own personalities. This makes the Scriptures “the Word of God,” but expressed in the words of individual writers.

Thought for the Day: The clearest evidence of a Spirit-filled Christian is that person‘s submission to the authority of Scripture as God‘s revealed Word and will.


The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament was originally in Greek. Many of the English translations don't always keep true to the original. Some are paraphrased- those Bibles are more concerned with the "readability" and the modern understanding of the words used. That is one reason I try to use the common Jewish version. It makes some the of the passages seem a little difference then we are use to in the NIV etc.