Regarding Spirit and “spirit,” see the comments at 1 Sam 10.6, where translators are encouraged to say “spirit of the LORD.”

Speaks by me: it is more natural in English to say that the spirit speaks “through” a person than “by” a person. But in certain other languages this will have to be restructured more radically to say something like “the spirit of the LORD has told me what to say” or “… has given me words to speak.”

The Hebrew noun translated word is not the usual Hebrew noun for “a word.” Rather this noun refers to an “utterance” and not to a single lexical unit. In many languages the plural “words” will be more natural. Others may use a term like “utterance” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) or “message” (Good News Translation).

Upon my tongue: the Good News Translation rendering is again more idiomatic modern English, but other languages will have idioms that are quite different. Some may say “his words are what I speak” or “the message I speak comes from him.”

In the parallel structure of this verse, the same essential idea is presented twice in somewhat different ways. For this reason some versions have preferred to make a single statement: “The spirit of the LORD has told me what to say.” But the second part of the parallelism focuses more specifically on the actual speaking of the message. Unless it is unnatural to do so, it is probably better to retain the parallelism, using a transition word between the two parts that will indicate that both are presenting the same idea. A possible model is as follows:

• The spirit of the LORD has told me what to say;
Indeed, it is God who gave me the words I speak.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 2. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .