Six or Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit?A Textual Quandary in Isaiah 11:1-3a

The Problem

Catholics who have attended Confirmation prep worth any salt will have memorised that there are Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶ 1831).  The older Douai-Rheims version, for example, reads:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of its root.  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him:  the Spirit of Wisdom, and of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel, and of Fortitude, the Spirit of Knowledge, and of Godliness [= Piety].  And he shall be filled with the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord (Is 11:1-3a).

When we pick up a modern Bible, say the New American Bible Revised Edition, this is what we read:

But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him:  a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength [= Fortitude], a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD (Is 11:1-3a). 

The same text in the Essene Jewish community's Great Isaiah Scroll isn't all that different, either:

And there shall come a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch (nazar) from his roots will bear fruit.  And the spirit of YHWH will rest upon him and the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of YHWH.  And he shall have an air of the fear of YHWH... (1Qlsa^a).

Notice how in both the Hebrew translations "Piety" or godliness is missing from the second text, though "Fear of the LORD" is repeated twice.  What is going on?  How can such a venerable tradition in Catholic devotion to the Holy Spirit seem to be wrong?

A Quick Historical-Critical Overview

The above Arbor Iesse pericope--from the Latin words "Tree of Jesse"--is situated within the broader "Book of Emmanuel" that runs from the start of chapter six to the end of chapter twelve, in which the ideal king is spelled out in Isaiah's oracles.  Opening with the call of Isaiah, son of Amoz, a vision of the heavenly temple is shown with the angelic Seraphim singing "Holy, holy, holy" (6:3), whence we get the Sanctus of the Mass.  God asks "who will go for Us?" and Isaiah volunteers.

Chapter seven begins with Isaiah encouraging King Ahaz in the Syro-Ephraimite War:  "Take care you remain calm and do not fear; do ot let your courage fail before these two stumps of smoldering brands," namely the city-states, of Aram and Ephraim, and promises that Judah will be victorious.  Then comes the revelation of the "Emmanuel" born of a "young woman" or "virgin" (9:10-16).

In chapter 8, God warns by way of Isaiah that if Judah wanted to be kept safe from the attacks from Assyria, they will need to trust in God's purposes and protection instead of warfare.  Towards the end of the chapter, another Messianic prophecy is given (8:23).  The same prophecy continues in chapter 9 about His coming Kingdom and coming peace:

For a Child is born to us, a son is given to us; / upon His shoulder dominion rests. / They name Him Wonder-Counsellor, God-Hero, / Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.  / His dominion is vast / and forever peaceful, / upon David's throne, and over his kingdom, / which He confirms and sustains / by judgment and justice, / both now and forever.  / The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this! (9:5-6).

Next comes God's judgment on the Northern Kingdom of Israel (9:7-20), then a generic judgment on injustice and oppression in chapter 10, followed by God's judgment on Assyria (10:5-34) and against its impending conquest of Jerusalem (10:28-34).  What is important to notice is that at the very last verse, we read:

He shall hack down the forest thickets with an ax, and Lebanon in its splendor shall fall.

This dovetails with the very first verse in chapter 11, "But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse..." because the failed conquest set in motion the Southern Kingdom's future Exile to Babylon, thus bringing the Davidic dynasty to an end.  The rest of chapter 11 promises a (Messianic) restoration.  The "Book of Emmanuel" concludes with a thanksgiving hymn in chapter 12.

Note, too, that the "Messiah" is someone anointed; the prophecy here is that He will be anointed not so much with oil, but with "the Spirit of the Lord."

The Greek Text of Isaiah 11:1-3a

Behind the Douay-Rheims text stands the Septuagint text, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek in the third century before Christ, which accounts for the difference between the Vulgate text and the modern translations from the Masoretic Hebrew:

Καὶ  ἐξελεύσεται ῥάβδος ἐκ τῆς ρίζης ᾿Ιεσσαί, καὶ ἄνθος ἐκ τῆς ρίζης ἀναβήσεται.  καὶ ἀναπαύσεται ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν πνεῦμα τοῦ Θεοῦ, πνεῦμα σοφίας καὶ συνέσεως, πνεῦμα βουλῆς καὶ ἰσχύος, πνεῦμα γνώσεως καὶ εὐσεβείας· ἐμπλήσει αὐτὸν πνεῦμα φόβου Θεοῦ.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a blossom shall come up from [his] root: and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness shall fill him; the spirit of the fear of God (L. C. L. Brenton's translation).

We immediately see three changes between the Greek text (LXX) and the Hebrew text (MS, given in the Revised New American Bible version above).  First, whereas the MSS has two instances of "Fear of the Lord at the end of v. 2 and at the start of v. 3, the LXX has only one.  Second, what was the first MSS instance of "fear of the Lord" was condensed simply to "godliness" (or "piety" in some translations).  Whereas the Hebrew text says that the "spirit of fear" will "fill" him in the second instance of the phrase, the Greek connects it with the first instance instead.  The other three couplets, wisdom/understanding, counsel/strength, and knowledge/godliness remain intact.

What happened?  For a culture that places great stress on the preservation of tradition, it is somewhat surprising to see such a shift.  Or was there even a shift in the first place?  Could it be that the MS does not necessarily reflect what the older Hebrew text might have carried?

Some think so.  The exegete J. J. M. Roberts relays, regarding the line "And his sense (for justice) comes from the fear of [YHWH]" (Is 11:3a), that "Because the meaning in this passage is not immediately transparent and the phrase has many similarities with the last line of the preceding verse, many scholars delete as entirely as a corrupt dittography of that line" (First Isaiah [Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2015], 178).  Otto Kaiser likewise says that "'And his delight is in the fear of [YHWH] and' is a half-line which arose through dittography... and in view of the absence a parallel half-line cannot be rescued even by more elegant translations" (Isaiah 1-12 [London:  SCM Press, 1983], 252).  In other words, these scholars believe that some scribe early on unwittingly repeated the phrase "...fear of the Lord..." (hence dittograph) and, given Hebrew literature's proclivity for parallelisms, it is next to impossible to construct such a parallel by the repetition of "...fear of the Lord..." and so, they think, one of the two instances is really a copyist's mistake.

The Aramaic and Syriac Old Testament

Interestingly enough, the Aramaic Targum has a wildly different rendition of this same text:

And a king shall come forth from the sons of Jesse, and the Messiah shall be exalted from the sons of  his sons.  And a spirit before the LORD shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  And the LORD shall bring him near to his fear (Bruce D. Chilton, The Aramaic Bible, vol. 11, The Isaiah Targum [Wilmington, Michael Glazier, Inc., 1987], 28).

The italicised portions are divergences in the Aramaic text with respect to the Hebrew.  Note that the three couplets remain intact, but the verses in question (the end of v. 2 and the start of v. 3) are rather different:  "...and the fear of the LORD.  And the LORD shall bring him near to his fear."

Is it possible that the gifts which "stand behind" godliness/piety and fear of the Lord were in a state of flux when they were translated from the Hebrew to Greek and Aramaic?  It seems likely.

Another possibility, and not mutually exclusive with what we've just proposed above, is that "fear" (in Hebrew, yiraw) had a certain polyvalence that was translated as "piety" in the first instance and "fear" in for the dittograph itself.  Yet, if you think about it, "fear of the Lord" which means a kind of reverential awe is indeed inclusive of such notions as godliness and piety.  In fact, the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew dictionary does include "reverence" and "piety" among its meanings.  It seems likely, therefore, that the Septuagint translators might have wanted to avoid repetition by translating two instances of the same Hebrew word differently.  An example of this would be the famous "and the young woman will conceive" in Isaiah 7:14.  The Hebrew text has ha 'almah, literally "young woman" or "maiden."  But, of course, as any father would hope for his young daughter, she would be a virgin as well as young when getting married, and so the Septuagint translators made this latent naunce more obvious in translating it as parthenos, "virgin."  A similar mechanism may be at work in Isaiah 11:2-3a.

But that's only if we assume that the Hebrew text which the LXX translators had access to was similar to the MS we now have.  If there was a dittograph, what was lost?  If we still had Origen's Hexapla--in which, among others, he compared various Greek editions of the New Testament with the proto-Masoretic text in attempt to defend the superiority of the Septuagint.  But the Hexapla was destroyed by one of the Islamic invasions of the early seventh century, and only fragments remain, none of which are that of Isaiah.

Another clue may be found in the Syriac translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that predates the Peshitta (which was a translation of the LXX).  As of this writing, I am still trying to track down someone who is an expert in the Syriac Old Testament, and I am still waiting for some replies.  Suffice it to say, however, that

It has been said that the number of seven gifts in the holy Fathers depends solely on the Septuagint version, without any foundation in the Hebrew text.  This point cannot be correct.  For the Syrian church, as is certain from St Ephraem and Aphraates, speaks about the seven gifts.  But since it uses a version independent of the Septuagint, it is necessary to conclude that a tradition existed, which joined the number "seven" with Isa. 11:2, and which was independent of that Greek version (S. G. Rivas and J. A. de Aldama, Sacrae theologiae summa IIIB:  On Grace [Saddle River:  Keep the Faith, 2014], 260).

It appears that a certain A. Vaccari thinks that, on the basis of the Syriac text, the Septuagint preserves something that has since been lost in the Masoretic (cf "Spiritus septiformis ex Isaia 11, 2," Verbum Domini 11 [1931], 131-133). 

Conclusion

The Second Vatican Council clearly indicated that "... the Church from the very beginning accepted as her own that very ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament which is called the Septuagint; and she has always given a place of honor to other Eastern translations and Latin ones..."  Why the liturgical readings in both the Lectionary for Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, while claiming to be texts revised at the instigation of the Council, insists on using the Masoretic Text is anybody's guess, but the Fathers of the Church almost uniformly preferred to use the Septuagint in their theological writings.

That being said, we can marshal one last bit of evidence.  St Jerome preferred what he called the Hebraica veritas to the Septuagint, and was a rarity among the Fathers in this regard.  Yet, for all of his bellyaching about how the Hebrew Old Testament was superior to the Hebrew, his Commentary on Isaiah gives no indication whatsoever of any discomfort, questioning, or even allusion to the (apparent) discrepancy between the lists of the "gifts" in the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments.  He says, for example,

It must be noted that the spirit of the Lord, of wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and piety, and the fear of the Lord--that is, a seven fold number, who are called seven eyes on a single stone (Zech 3:9 LXX)--will come to rest on the branch and the blossom which has sprung up from Jesse, and thereby from the line of David (Robert Louis Wilken, The Church's Bible:  Isaiah [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2007], 138).

Clearly, Jerome was unflappable in the face of an apparent discrepancy.

Maybe we can be, too.