In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Spinoza's Latin renderings of citations from the Hebrew Bible occasionally depart from his usual literalism. Three Latin terms represent the most glaring departures because they have no strict lexical equivalents in biblical Hebrew. Each term is central to the argument of the Tractatus itself: certitudo ('certainty' and its cognates), exequi ('to execute'), and scientia ('science'). This essay asks whether these departures from strict literalism have their rationale in the Tractatus's overall purpose, namely, freeing philosophy or science (including scientific biblical criticism) from the authority of sectarian biblical theology and, at the same time, accommodating the Bible's political teaching properly understood to modern liberal democracy.