As the Holy Spirit Says

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

         “Today, if you hear his voice … .” ( Hebrews 3:7 ESV)

In Hebrews 3, the author quotes four and a half verses from Psalm 95, and he introduces them with five word: As the Holy Spirit says. It’s a phrase the reader may be tempted to pass over without much thought, because it’s not directly connected to the main point of the passage. But this is scripture, so there are no throwaway lines. 

What can we learn from this seemingly insignificant phrase?

First, it teaches us something about the psalm that is quoted. We do not know the human author of Psalm 95, but according to Hebrews, the psalmist’s own words are also the Holy Spirit speaking. 

By extension, this applies to all the psalms. David, Solomon, Asaph, and the others psalmists spoke “from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).” They crafted their psalms using their own words and their own poetic skills, yet each psalm is also the voice of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is speaking his thoughts through them.

Not too long ago, I heard someone attribute a mildly imprecatory portion of one of the psalms to the psalmist’s immaturity. I’m pretty sure the author of Hebrews would not endorse this idea. If what he says here is true—if the words of a psalmist are also the words of the Holy Spirit—when we interpret the Psalms, shouldn’t we start by assuming that they are expressions of mature wisdom and principled ethics, even the imprecatory bits? When we read the Psalms, we hear human voices, but they are sanctified human voices, inspired by the Holy Spirit. No matter how “immature” the psalmist was, because he was carried along by the Holy Spirit, his conclusions are righteous and his petitions are holy.

Second, this little phrase teaches something about the Holy Spirit. Several of the Old Testament quotes used in Hebrews are attributed to God (1:5-8, 13; 5:5-6; 8:5-8), including, in the next chapter, the first line of this same citation from Psalm 95 (4:8). The same words are said to be spoken by the Holy Spirit in chapter 3 and by God in chapter 4. According to the author of Hebrews, then, when the Holy Spirit speaks, God speaks. Or to put it another way, when “God spoke to [the] fathers by the prophets (Hebrews 1:1)” it was also the Holy Spirit speaking. This puts the Holy Spirit in the same league as God, and is a strong statement of the deity of the Spirit.

What’s more, a Holy Spirit who says something isn’t just an impersonal force. If he speaks, he has personality; he is a person.

These five easy-to-overlook words from Hebrews 3, then, are more important than they might seem. They contain a piece of the doctrine of scripture and two building blocks for the doctrine of the Trinity.