Twelve Words 6 min read Lesson 5 of 12

The Hebrew word behind spirit, breath and wind, and the choice a translator makes every time it appears

Ruach: The Wind That Is Also the Spirit

On the first page of the Bible something moves over the water, and your translation has already decided what: the Spirit of God, or a wind from God. The Hebrew word is one word, and it means both, and Ezekiel builds a whole vision on the fact that it does.

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Lesson 5 of 12 · Hebrew

Ruach is moving air — wind in the world, breath in a creature — and, because breath is life and wind is power that cannot be seen, it is also spirit: the life in a person, the disposition they are in, and the Spirit of God. The Old Testament never splits these into separate words, and the best passages use two or three senses in one breath. English has to choose, and the choice is made by the translator, verse by verse, sometimes by a capital letter alone. Read spirit in your Old Testament and remember that wind and breath are standing behind it; read wind and remember that the Spirit may be.

The first page

The word appears in the second verse of the Bible, and the translations part company at once.

The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. — Genesis 1:2 · WEB

Read the comment on In the beginning

The Spirit of God hovered, or moved, or brooded; some modern versions say a wind from God swept. The Hebrew is one phrase, ruach elohim, and both readings are honest, because the word is both. The translator who writes Spirit has decided the verse is about God present; the one who writes wind has decided it describes the scene before God speaks. Nothing in the Hebrew settles it, which is exactly what a reader should know.

רוּחַ rûwach H7307

from רוּחַ; wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; figuratively, life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extension, a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being (including its expression and functions); air, anger, blast, breath, [idiom] cool, courage, mind, [idiom] quarter, [idiom] side, spirit(-ual), tempest, [idiom] vain, (whirl-) wind(-y).

Air in motion. As wind: the east wind that dries the sea, the four winds of heaven. As breath: what leaves a creature when it dies and what God gives back. As spirit: the life in a person, the mood they are in — a spirit of jealousy, a broken spirit, a new spirit — and the Spirit of God that rests on a craftsman, a judge, a king or a prophet. About four hundred uses, spread across all three, and the translator chooses each time.

One vision, every sense

Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones uses the word ten times in fourteen verses, and it means wind, breath and Spirit by turns, sometimes in a single sentence.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man, and tell the wind, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”’” — Ezekiel 37:9 · WEB

Read the comment on The Valley of Dry Bones

Prophesy to the wind; come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain. Three English words, one Hebrew one, and the prophet is told to summon it as wind so that it may enter as breath. Then, when the bodies stand:

I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. Then I will place you in your own land; and you will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken it and performed it,” says Yahweh.’” — Ezekiel 37:14 · WEB

Read the comment on The Valley of Dry Bones

I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. The same word, now with a capital letter, and the whole vision is the word turning from weather into breath into God. Read it in Hebrew and it is one thing happening; read it in English and the translator has had to break it into three.

“God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.” Genesis 8:1 · WEB
God made a wind pass over the earth, and the flood went down: the word as weather, doing God’s work.
“You hide your face; they are troubled. You take away their breath; they die and return to the dust. You send out your Spirit and they are created. You renew the face of the ground.” Psalm 104:29–30 · WEB
You take away their breath, they die; you send your Spirit, they are created: one word, both senses, two verses apart.
“Yahweh’s Spirit will rest on him: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh.” Isaiah 11:2 · WEB
The Spirit of Yahweh will rest on him: the word as God’s own presence on a person.
“and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:7 · WEB
The spirit returns to God who gave it: breath, or spirit, or both, and the argument of the last lesson stands beside this verse too.

The capital letter

Hebrew has no capitals. Every Spirit with a capital S in your Old Testament is a translator’s judgment that the word means God’s own Spirit here and not a wind or a creature’s breath, and the judgment is usually sound and occasionally contested. Genesis 1:2 is the famous case. Psalm 51:11, take not your holy spirit from me, is another: the older versions capitalise, some newer ones do not, and the difference is whether David is asking God not to withdraw his presence or not to take away the life in him. Both are prayers a man in his position might pray. The Hebrew does not choose, and a reader who wants to see the choice being made can open the verse in the comparative view and watch the capital come and go.

Wind and Spirit in one Greek word too

The New Testament inherits the ambiguity through the Greek pneuma, which is also wind, breath and spirit, and Jesus uses it as Ezekiel did. The wind blows where it wills, he tells Nicodemus, and you hear its sound but cannot tell where it comes from; so is everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8). In Greek as in Hebrew that sentence begins and ends with the same word, and the play is the point: what is born of it is as free and as unaccountable as weather.

What the word asks

It asks for a certain humility about the invisible. The Old Testament chose one word for the wind, the breath and God’s Spirit because all three are known by what they move and none by what they look like. A reader who meets spirit and expects to see something has the wrong word in mind; a reader who expects to be moved has the right one.