A friend recently asked me why divine pronouns aren’t capitalized in the ESV. I pointed her to this helpful overview blog post by Jeremy Pierce. Jeremy argues that we should do what the Bible itself does—namely, follow contemporary capitalization practices.
He also points out an interpretive problem—namely, that the referent of the pronoun is not always clear, especially in case of typological fulfillment in Christ.
The ESV Study Bible sought to give readers some help in interpreting pronouns, especially in the Prophetic books:
Pronouns in the Prophets
As prepositions are to the letters of Paul, so pronouns are to the oracles of the prophets: crucial for meaning, but often puzzling. Hebrew prophets delivered messages on God’s behalf, so identifying who is being addressed, and who is being spoken about, is central to understanding their preaching. Naturally, use of pronouns (“I,” “we,” “you,” “she,” etc.) can frustrate modern readers when their antecedent (the actual person or entity being referred to) either is missing or could have more than one possible candidate. Although pronoun confusion arises most naturally in the Prophets, it also crops up in the prayers of the Psalms. Sometimes modern biblical translations smooth out such difficulties for the reader by specifying the referent or adjusting the pronouns. The ESV approach, in general, prefers to represent the pronouns in English as equivalent to those appearing in the Hebrew, and not to make decisions for the reader about their referents.
In prophetic literature, confusing pronoun references occur especially in the following cases: (1) unmarked interjections; (2) unsignaled transitions in oracles or other passages; (3) differences in ancient and modern conventions for pronouns; and (4) obscurity in a passage beyond simply its pronouns. Also, (5) an author might be addressing the people as a whole (personified as a single “you”). The following are examples for each scenario.
(1) Who is “he” in Zechariah 10:11? The Lord speaks as “I” on either side of this verse; ancient versions and commentators often read “they” here, to link back to the last word of Zechariah 10:10. However, the context suggests that the action of Zechariah 10:10 belongs to the Lord, and in Zechariah 10:12b, the Lord’s own voice seems to refer to himself in the third person (“his name”). Here the prophet’s voice and the Lord’s seem fused, and in spite of changing between “I” and “he/him,” the reference is consistently to God.
(2) Who is “us” in Isaiah 41:22? The first-person plural reference continues in Isaiah 41:23, and then reappears in Isaiah 41:26, but never with an explicit referent. Here, help comes from the wider context. The setting is the divine courtroom (“set forth your case,” Isa. 41:21), and this is introduced at Isaiah 41:1 (“let us draw near for judgment”), so “us” in Isaiah 41:22 remains the members of the divine court who are hearing the case against the idols of Isaiah 41:7.
(3) Who is “her” in Micah 7:10? The answer partly depends on who is “me” in Micah 7:8. “My enemy” in Micah 7:8, 10 is grammatically feminine (Hb. ’oyabti), and so is the antecedent for “her” in Micah 7:10. It is likely, then, that the first-person voice is also feminine (cf. Mic. 6:9; 7:11)—Jerusalem personified. In biblical convention, cities are referred to as feminine and nations as masculine—unlike modern English usage in which cities are normally neuter (“it”) and nations are feminine.
(4) A genuine difficulty is the “they” (fem.) reference of Ezekiel 30:17, represented in the ESV by “women” but with a textual note, “Or the cities; Hebrew they.” The translation adopted in the text takes its cue from “young men” in Ezekiel 30:17a and “daughters” of Ezekiel 30:18b. “Cities” remains possible (see example 3), as “On” and “Pi-beseth” are the closest immediate antecedents in context.
(5) The prophets can personify God’s people, viewed corporately, as if a single person. In Isaiah 41:8–10, “you” (masculine singular) refers to “Jacob,” the whole people portrayed as God’s “servant” (to accomplish his purposes for the world). It is to the people viewed corporately that God promises, “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you” (Isa. 41:10). Similarly, in Isaiah 49:15–16, God addresses “you” (this time feminine singular), a personification of Zion (Isa. 49:14), representing the whole people (see also Isa. 54:1–17).
Awareness of these possibilities should assist the reader in untangling some of the pronoun references that might initially seem difficult to understand.
