Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Where can we find the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit from the Bible?

by Messrs. John Fok and Alex Kwok
Supervisor: Fr. Marciano Baptista S.J.
April 14, 2006

For those of us who were brought up by the Baltimore Catechism (1891) ¹, life consists of a set of model answers:

Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.
Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.
…
Q. Which are the chief effects of the Redemption?
A. The chief effects of the Redemption are two: The satisfaction of God's justice by Christ's sufferings and death, and the gaining of grace for men.
Q. What do you mean by grace?
A. By grace I mean a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for our salvation.
Q. How many kinds of grace are there?
A. There are two kinds of grace, sanctifying grace and actual grace.
Q. What is sanctifying grace?
A. Sanctifying grace is that grace which makes the soul holy and pleasing to God.
…
Q. Which are the effects of Confirmation?
A. The effects of Confirmation are an increase of sanctifying grace, the strengthening of our faith, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Q. Which are the gifts of the Holy Ghost?
A. The gifts of the Holy Ghost are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.
…

Life is very good because there is no ambiguity. Everything is clear-cut, good and bad; black and white.

Beginning of a paper chase

Now, we have grown a bit older and wiser. We want to know not only the answers, but also the basis for these answers. Isn't the Bible or Holy Scripture one of the sources of these answers? Where in the Bible can we find the '7 gifts of the Holy Ghost'? Once more, we have an answer: Isaiah 11:1-2. ²

"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. And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord …"
(Isaiah 11:2-3a, Douay-Rheims Bible 1582) ³

I suppose 'piety' (in 1891 English) and 'godliness' (in 1582 English) mean nearly the same thing. Isn't life beautiful? Well, there are many versions and translations of the Bible. What do the other versions say about it? Here are a few samples.

"And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD…"
(KJV 1611) ⁴

"And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD…"
(RSV 1952) ⁵

Hey, what happened to 'godliness' and 'piety'? Both KJV and RSV changed them into 'the fear of the Lord' which is repeated! Would the repetition be redundant? Now, we are getting more serious in the study of the Bible. Shouldn't we read her in her mother-tongues? Let us begin with Latin, the mother-tongue of the Catholic Church.

"et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et pietatis, et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini…"
(Vulgate 405)⁶

Don't you see the 'pietatis'? Isn't it comforting to see how faithful Baltimore Catechism was to the Latin Vulgate Bible?
However, the latest Latin version, the Nova Vulgata, chose 'timoris Domini' (the fear of the Lord) instead of 'pietatis'!

"et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et timoris Domini; et deliciae eius in timore Domini…"
(Nova Vulgata 1979) ⁷

No wonder, Jesus said "And no man drinking old, hath presently a mind to new: for he saith, The old is better." (Luke 5:39)
Before Latin, there was Greek. From the 3rd century to 1st century B.C., scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew Scripture into Greek because most Jews did not know Hebrew anymore. So, let us come closer to the original and try Greek, the Septuagint (LXX).

"καὶ ἀναπαύσεται ἐπ' αὐτὸν πνεῦμα τοῦ ϑεοῦ, πνεῦμα σοϕίας καὶ συνέσεως, πνεῦμα βουλῆς καὶ ἰσχύος, πνεῦμα γ νώσεως καὶ εὐσεβείας· ἐμπλήσει αὐτὸν πνεῦμα ϕόβου ϑεοῦ…"
(TITUS Texts)⁸

Septuaginta, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1935

καὶ	ἀναπαύσεται	ἐπ'	αὐτὸν	πνεῦμα	τοῦ ϑεοῦ
And	will be caused to rest	upon	him	spirit	of God
πνεῦμα	σοϕίας	καὶ	συνέσεως	πνεῦμα	βουλῆς
a spirit	of wisdom	and	understanding	a spirit	of counsel
καὶ	ἰσχύος	πνεῦμα	γνώσεως	καὶ	εὐσεβείας·
and	strength	a spirit	of knowledge	and	piety
ἐμπλήσει αὐτὸν		πνεῦμα		ϕόβου ϑεοῦ
shall fill him up		a spirit		of the fear of God ⁹

Aha! There you are, 'εὐσεβείας' (piety). That is why it is always profitable to be able to speak several languages.
'εὐσεβείας' appears 29 times in LXX, once in Esdras III (1:21), twice in Proverbs (1:7 and 13:11); Isaiah (11:2 and 33:6) and the remaining 24 scattered among Maccabees II, III and IV¹⁰. Therefore, the use of 'piety' began all the way back to the 3rd century B.C. in Septuagint, in Greek.
What about the original, the Masoretic Text? Be adventurous and take a deep breath. Read Hebrew (from right to left) now.

וְנָחָה עָלָיו רוּחַ יְהוָה רוּחַ חָכְמָה וּבִינָה
רוּחַ עֵצָה וּגְבוּרָה רוּחַ דַּעַת וְיִרְאַת יְהוָה
¹¹ וַהֲרִיחוֹ בְּיִרְאַת יְהוָ

יְהוָה	רוּחַ	עָלָיו	וְנָחָה
the Lord	the spirit (of)	on him	and shall rest
	וּבִינָה	חָכְמָה	רוּחַ
	and intellect	wisdom	the spirit (of)
	וּגְבוּרָה	עֵצָה	רוּחַ
	and fortitude	counsel	the spirit (of)
יְהוָה	וְיִרְאַת	דַּעַת	רוּחַ
the Lord	and fear (of)	knowledge	the spirit (of)
יְהוָה	בְּיִרְאַת	וַהֲרִיחוֹ
the Lord	in the fear (of)	make him delight

So, in the end, the Hebrew text is 'the fear of the Lord'. But have we reached the end of our paper chase? Before we proceed, let us tidy up what we have gathered. The following table lists all the versions quoted so far.

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. And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord …
(Rouay-Rheims)

et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et pietatis, et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini…
(Vulgate)

καὶ ἀναπαύσεται ἐπ' αὐτὸν πνεῦμα τοῦ ϑεοῦ, πνεῦμα σοϕίας καὶ συνέσεως, πνεῦμα βουλῆς καὶ ἰσχύος, πνεῦμα γνώσεως καὶ εὐσεβείας· ἐμπλήσει αὐτὸν πνεῦμα ϕόβου ϑεοῦ…
(Septuagint)

And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD …
(King James Version)

And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD…
(Revised Standard Version)

et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et timoris Domini; et deliciae eius in timore Domini…
(Nova Vulgata)

וְנָחָה עָלָיו רוּחַ יְהוָה רוּחַ חָכְמָה וּבִינָה
רוּחַ עֵצָה וּגְבוּרָה רוּחַ דַּעַת וְיִרְאַת יְהוָה
וַהֲרִיחוֹ בְּיִרְאַת יְהוָ
(Masoretic Text)

Now, we see KJV, RSV and Nova Vulgata chose 'the fear of the Lord' because they wanted to follow the Hebrew Scripture. Then, why didn't Septuagint follow? Why did Septuagint translate 'the fear of the Lord' into 'piety'?

II. Wrestling with words: fear vs. piety

Let's take a look at the word יִרְאָה . It means awe, fear, piety, respect, reverence and terror¹². The phrase "the fear of the Lord" יְהוָה יִרְאָה, appears 22 times in the Old Testament, once in 2 Chronicles 19:9 and Job 28:28, three times in Psalm 19:10, 34:11, 111:10 and in Isaiah 11:2-3, 33:6 and 14 times in Proverbs¹³. Proverbs 1:7 is the intersection of both sets of verses. Let us take a closer look.
Proverb 1:7 is the famous "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Douay-Rheims) ¹⁴

¹⁵ יִרְאַת יְהוָה רֵאשִׁית דָּעַת חָכְמָה וּמוּסָר אֱוִילִים בָּזוּ

However, the Septuagint rendered a longer, richer translation:

᾽Αρχὴ σοϕίας ϕόβος ϑεοῦ, σύνεσις δὲ ἀγαϑὴ πᾶσι τοῖς ποιοῦσιν αὐτήν· εὐσέβεια δὲ εἰς ϑεὸν ἀρχὴ αἰσϑήσεως, σοϕίαν δὲ καὶ παιδείαν ἀσεβεῖς ἐξουϑενήσουσιν.
"The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, understanding and good to all, the ones observing it; and piety to God is the beginning of perception; but wisdom and instruction, the impious will treat with contempt."
(Interlinear-Septuagint) ¹⁶

The Septuagint rendered 'the fear of God (ϕόβος ϑεοῦ)' or 'the fear of the Lord (φόβος κυρίου)' 19 times out of these 22 instances. Job 28:28 (θεοσέβειά), Isaiah 11:2 and 33:6 (εὐσέβεια) are the exceptions. And Proverbs 1:7 turns out to be an addition rather than a devious translation.
It is impossible for us to speculate why the Septuagint chose to translate 'the fear of the Lord' into 'piety'. After all, they don't look too different in our layman's eyes. And we know that scholars need to make a lot of decisions in choosing one candidate among many plausible translations. These decisions reflect the theology embraced or defended by these scholars. Septuagint's interpretation is authoritative because it was the first translation of the Hebrew Scripture into a European language, even before the canon of Hebrew Scripture was finalized.
The Septuagint attempt has several advantages. First of all, it reduces the redundancy of repeating 'the fear of the Lord' by changing one of them into 'piety' and it is not a wrong translation. It highlights certain aspects of 'the fear of the Lord' and enriches its colours.
Secondly, it satisfies human psychology. People, ancient and modern, invested much significance to the number seven. There are 7 days a week. There are 7 luminaries in the heavens (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). There are 7 Wonders in the Ancient World. There are 7 continents on earth. God would punish 7 times anyone who murdered Cain (Gen 4:15). The Israelites would displace 7 nations from the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 7:1). There are 7 heavens, 7 sacraments, 7 capital sins, 7 spiritual works of mercy etc . An American psychologist, George Miller, hypothesized in 1956, that the effective channel capacity for human senses is 7, plus or minus 2. This probably was one of the motivations behind the Septuagint attempt to make the gifts of the Spirit up to 7: to make it easier for the audience to memorize.
Finally, from the high concentration of 'εὐσεβείας (piety)' found in the books of Maccabees, 24 out of a total of 29 occurrences, we can glimpse the influence the authors of the Maccabean History had on the Septuagint scholars. 'Piety' was as much important as 'the fear of the Lord' for the Jews under the hostile reign of the Seleucid dynasty. For example, Judas Maccabee, believing in the resurrection of the dead, thought it wholesome and holy to offer sacrifice for those who had died in godliness (piety) for the holy cause of religious freedom (2 Maccabees 12:43-46) . Those fighters had died because they had hidden under their coats, amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia (12:40). You could not call this kind of behaviour 'fear of the Lord', could you? Yet, the Maccabean historians would still value their fighting to death for religious freedom and label it 'εὐσέβεια'. Now, life is no longer good and bad, black and white. You are going to live up with sinners, eat with them, find merits among their many faults and call them back to the Kingdom of God.

III. Diving into theology

Justin Martyr and St. Augustine spent quite a bit of time theorizing and writing about how these 'seven gifts' work in the soul of the recipient. But it was St. Thomas Aquinas who developed the most complete theology surrounding the 'seven gifts'. He saw them as qualitatively different and superior to the moral and theological virtues . He also regarded the Holy Spirit, not the human person, as the actuator of these gifts in each individual.
Contemporary theology says little about the 'seven gifts' of the Holy Spirit, preferring to discuss all the gifts of the Spirit. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium doesn't refer to the gifts listed in Isaiah, opting to speak of St. Paul's description of the gifts of the Spirit found in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12:4-11) . But many still remember being taught the 'seven gifts' and the '12 fruits' of the Holy Spirit which are charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. (KJV listed only nine: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance.)

IV. Conclusion:

We began our journey from the Baltimore Catechism and reached Lumen Gentium in the end. We walked through some landmarks in the history of Bible translations. In these landmarks, we see the influence of theology behind the choice among competing translations. We met the Angelicus Doctor who finalized the theology of the '7 gifts of the Holy Spirit' which is profitable for instructional purposes. However, theology nowadays tends to be more encompassing. There are so many gems to pick up on the way and we managed to pocket just a few. It is indeed a journey of growth, in faith as well as reason.

Sources:

Pictures of Baltimore Catechism, KJV, RSV and Vatican II come from Amazon.com. Those of Vulgate and Douay-Rheims Bible come from Douay-Rheims online Bible. Those of Septuagint and Biblia Hebraica are personal.
Archive from The Holy See
Baltimore Catechism (1891), Part 2 accessible from Sacred-Texts.com
Douay-Rheims online Bible
George Miller (1956) "The Magical number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity to Process Information", Psychological Review 63, pp 81-97, from Psychology Classics
Interlinear Septuagint from The Apostolic Bible(2006)
KJV text, lexicon & concordance, from The Blue Letter Bible
Latin Vulgate Bible from Douay-Rheims online Bible
Masoretic Text and JPS 1917 edition, from Mechon Mamre
Online Catholic Encyclopaedia, Summa Theologica etc. from New Advent
The free encyclopedia, from Wikipedia
Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes from TITUS Texts

Footnotes

Baltimore Catechism Part 2, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/balt/balt2.htm

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) para. #1831, footnote 109 from http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm

http://www.drbo.org/chapter/27011.htm

http://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/Isa/Isa011.html

http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/tools/printer-friendly.pl?book=Isa&chapter=11&version=rsv&Go.x=27&Go.y=15

http://www.drbo.org/lvb/chapter/27011.htm

http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_index_lt.html

http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/grie/sept/sept.htm?sept998.htm#VT_Is._11

http://septuagint-interlinear-greek-bible.com/pdf/isaiah.pdf

Search result for εὐσεβείας in TITUS TEXTS, http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/database/titusinx/titusinx.asp?LXLANG=8&LXWORD=B503C503C303B503B203B503B903B103C303&LCPL=0&TCPL=0&C=H&PF=179

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1011.htm

Strong #03374, http://www.blueletterbible.org

Search result for "the fear of the Lord", showing Strong's number from the Blue Letter Bible web site.

http://www.drbo.org/chapter/22001.htm

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt2801.htm

http://septuagint-interlinear-greek-bible.com/pdf/proverbs.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_(number)

http://www.drbo.org/chapter/46012.htm

SUMMA THEOLOGICA, Prima Secundae Partis 68, "The gifts of the Holy Spirit" 8, "Whether the virtues are more excellent than the gifts?", from http://www.newadvent.org/summa/206808.htm

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, para. #7, from http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

Galatians 5:12-13 (Douay-Rheims and Vulgate)

Surnames of Famous Doctors, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05074a.htm