Heard a fascinating piece of bad exegesis the other day. The Holy Spirit is a she.

The basis of this claim was that the Hebrew word for “spirit” (ruach) is feminine. The short answer is that if this is true, then the Spirit is also an “it” since the Greek word for “spirit” (πνευμα) is neuter.

The longer answer is that Hebrew and Greek words follow what is called “grammatical gender.” This means that the gender of the word is not determined by its meaning but by other things. For example, all nouns ending in ματ are neuter. Since πνευμα is from the root πνευματ, it is therefore neuter. But that says nothing about how the Greek understood of the concept of God’s Spirit.