Ghost

The English word "ghost" appears in two distinct registers in the UPDV. In the Old Testament and Sirach it carries the older idiom of dying — a person "gives up" or "yields up the ghost," meaning expires. In the gospels it once names what the disciples take Jesus for when they see him on the water — an apparition. The two senses share an English root but pull in opposite directions: the first is a way of saying died; the second is a thing the living mistake the living for.

Giving Up the Ghost

The Pentateuchal patriarch death-notices use the older idiom four times. Of Abraham: "And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, old and satisfied, and was gathered to his people" (Gen 25:8). Of Ishmael: "And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven years. And he gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered to his people" (Gen 25:17). Of Isaac: "And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered to his people, old and full of days: and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him" (Gen 35:29). And of Jacob: "And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered to his people" (Gen 49:33). The pattern is fixed — the verb-pair "gave up the ghost, and died" or "yielded up the ghost" closes the patriarch's life and opens the gathering-formula.

Job uses the same idiom four times in his protest-speech, but turned the other way — as the death he wishes had come earlier. "Why didn't I die from the womb? Why didn't I give up the ghost when my mother bore me?" (Job 3:11). "Why then have you brought me forth out of the womb? I should have given up the ghost, and no eye would have seen me" (Job 10:18). "Who is he that will contend with me? For then I would hold my peace and give up the ghost" (Job 13:19). And on the human condition generally: "But [noble] man dies, and is laid low: Yes, man gives up the ghost, and where is he?" (Job 14:10).

Lamentations turns the idiom on the city's clergy under siege: "I called for my lovers, [but] they deceived me: My priests and my elders gave up the ghost in the city, While they sought food for them to refresh their souls" (La 1:19). And in Sirach a wisdom-saying restrains gloating over the dead: "Do not boast yourself over him who gave up the ghost; Remember all of us will be taken away" (Sir 8:7). Across all of these — patriarchs, Job, the besieged city, the Sirach maxim — "give up / yield up the ghost" is a way of saying die; the word does not name a separable spectral being.

A Ghost on the Water

The other register is the gospel apparition-scene. The disciples in the storm see Jesus walking on the sea and read what they see as a phantom: "but they, when they saw him walking on the sea, supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out" (Mk 6:49). Here "ghost" names the misidentification — the disciples take the living Jesus for a specter — and the surrounding narrative immediately corrects them ("It is I; don't be afraid").