1 Samuel 16:13
1 Samuel 16:1313So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.
JWs cite the anointing of David — "the spirit of Jehovah began to empower David from that day forward" — as evidence that the holy spirit is an impersonal active force that comes upon selected individuals to empower them for tasks. The lowercase "spirit" in the NWT and the task-empowerment frame fit naturally with the Watchtower's "spirit-as-electricity" pneumatology, where the spirit flows when conditions are clean and can be withdrawn when they are not.
This is genuine Old Covenant Spirit-economy and we should read it that way. Under the Old Covenant the Spirit came upon selected leaders — prophets, judges, kings — for empowering tasks, and could be transferred or withdrawn (Saul next door, verse 14). But Jesus explicitly contrasts that mode with the New Covenant arrangement: "He will be with you forever… He abides with you and will be IN you" (). Pentecost inaugurates a different Spirit-economy. So treating David's anointing as the template for how the Spirit relates to the New Covenant believer collapses two covenant administrations into one. The doorstep move is gentle: yes, this verse describes the Spirit coming upon David — and the Spirit IS personal, even here, as the same Spirit who teaches, intercedes, grieves and seals (; 4:30). The mode of indwelling changed at Pentecost; the personhood did not.
NWT renders "the spirit of Jehovah began to empower David", with "spirit" lowercase. The Hebrew tetragrammaton drives the "Jehovah" insertion, and the lowercase reflects the Watchtower's pneumatology of the holy spirit as an impersonal active force rather than the third person of the Godhead. The translation is grammatically defensible for the OT (where personal pronouns for the Spirit are rare); the doctrinal weight comes when this Old Covenant pattern is read back onto NT pneumatology to deny the Spirit's personhood.