At a glance
The inborn perceptiveness the chapter ascribes to the infant Huangdi. Read as ‘divine’, it turns a description of temperament into a claim about gods — which the sentence does not make. What is being described is an unusually quick child.
The opening line of the whole Suwen is a character sketch, not a theology: born with 神靈, speaking while still an infant, quick as a child, earnest as he grew. The four phrases describe one temperament from four angles.
Translating 神靈 as “divine” is the common shortcut, and it costs the reader the sentence. Nothing in the line claims parentage or worship; the claim is that he was unusually perceptive from birth.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.