Human Spirit

The Human Spirit

Exegetical and Lexical Word Studies

Old Testament
Spirit in the OT is rûach, which is translated as spirit, wind, and breath. It derives from rûch, to breathe. As a noun, it is found 387 times in the OT. Rûach is used of men in such places as Isaiah 42:5; Ezekiel 37:5-6, 8, etc.; and Psalms 51:10, 12, 17.

  1. The spirit was created by God.

    1. God “formeth the spirit of man within him” (Zech. 12:1).

    2. God's word created the beasts (Gen. 1:24), but God's breath created man (2:7).

      1. “The narrative here (Gen. 2:7) points out two distinct sources from whence man was taken. 1. Of the dust of the ground fashioned by the hand of God, as the potter fashions the clay (yâtsar). 2. Of the breath of lives breathed into his nostrils by the creative spirit of God” (Heard, 37-38).

      2. “When God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, he was given that which we call the pneuma, or spirit, the conscientia or consciousness common between him and God” (Ibid., 157).

      3. According to Gen. 2:7, “As soon as the breath of life, which became man's spirit, came into contact with man's body, the soul was produced. Hence the soul is the combination of man's body and spirit….The original of the word 'life' in 'breath of life' is chay and is in the plural. This may refer to the fact that the inbreathing of God produced a twofold life, soulical and spiritual. When the inbreathing of God entered man's body it became the spirit of man; but when the spirit reacted with the body the soul was produced….The spirit of man touching the dead body produced the soul” (Nee, Spiritual Man, 1:23-24).

      4. “This spirit is not God's Own life, for 'the breath of the Almighty gives me life' (Job 33:4)” (Ibid., 1:24).

      5. “God the Creator creates out of Himself that which man was to have in common with Himself, the human spirit. This is far from being God as a breath of man is far from being a man” (Delitzsch, 94).

      6. “The human spirit is…a created thing: for it is a nature which came into being in time,…but, in distinction from all other earthly natures, by an immediate, personal operation of God” (Ibid., 95).

      7. God made the human nepesh (Jer. 38:16; Isa. 57:16) and formed the human pneuma (Isa. 42:5; Zech. 12:1) (Ibid., 98).

      8. It was by the inbreathing of the breath of life that the spirit was created. We identify “the breath of life with the spirit, as distinguished from the soul” (Ibid., 101).

      9. “The process of the creation of man (was that) God first formed the human body…then breathed into this form the creature spirit….His breath made the spirit of man. This spirit, entering into the form of the body…revealed itself…as soul” (Ibid., 102).

      10. “Man is in the likeness of God, but God is spirit (John 4:24); the first and most special subject of the divine resemblance, therefore, is the spirit of man” (Ibid., 196).

    3. God gave “breath and spirit to all people” (Isa. 42:5).

    4. “My breath is in me, and the spirit of (from) God is in my nostrils” (Job 27:3; cf. LXX, “spirit pertaining to God”) (Payne, TWOT, 2:836) and not God's own Spirit.

  2. Rûach (spirit) is different from nepesh (soul).

    1. “The soul of every living thing, and the spirit of all flesh of man” (Job 12:10; cf. 27:2-3).

    2. Rûach is distinct from nepesh. Rûach “imparts the divine image to man and constitutes the animating dynamic which results in man's nepesh as the subject of personal life (which is) the distinctive personality of the individual” (Archer, TWOT, 2:837).

    3. “Both nepesh and rûach…leave the body at death and exist in a state separate from it” (Payne, TWOT, 2:837). See Gen. 35:18; Psa. 86:13; Eccl. 12:7; and IKgs. 17:22.

    4. “The Nepesh of the Old Testament is a general term, expressive of life. Every living thing has a soul; whether it has conscious personality or not it has a soul in so far as it is an individual” (Heard, 61).

    5. “Not only do we read of a Nepesh Chayah (living soul), but also of a Nepesh Meth, a dead soul, used as a synonym for a dead body, Num. 6:6” (Ibid., 62).

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