The Concepts of Wind, Breath, and Spirit in the Ancient Near East

Although the Hebrew רוּחַ (ruach, “wind,” “breath,” “spirit”) in the Old Testament has similarities to cognates in related languages, “the term rûaḥ has a unique development of its lexical range of meaning in the Old Testament” (Hildebrandt, Old Testament Theology, 5). Ancient Near Eastern texts do not seem to suggest that gods have their own spirits or that the רוּחַ (ruach) is a divine manifestation of a god, but at times, it is viewed as the instrument of the gods (Hildebrandt, Old Testament Theology, 4).

In West Semitic literature, particularly at Ugarit, the term rch is regarded as the linguistic equivalent of the Old Testament term רוּחַ (ruach) (Hildebrandt, Old Testament Theology, 4). Generally, in Ugaritic, rch is translated “wind, breath, fragrance,” signifying “the atmospheric phenomena” that accompany the movement of deity in the poem depicting Baal (Hildebrandt, Old Testament Theology, 4). From this linguistic usage, it might be inferred that the ancient people assumed that the deity of Baal is in charge of lightning, rain, stormy wind, and life itself. Akkadian literature uses the term sharu in referring to “wind” and “life-breath,” and this term is more similar to the Hebrew word for “storm” (סַ֫עַר, sa'ar) than to רוּחַ (ruach) (Albertz and Westermann, “rûaḥ, Geist,” 726–27).

In Egyptian myth, the gods, particularly Amon, effect life-giving breath in the human being in a similar manner to the God of the Old Testament texts (compare Gen 2:7; Job 33:4; Hehn, “Zum Problem Des Geistes,” 216–18). In Egyptian literature, Amon and Horus are depicted as supreme deities who provide the breath of life to human beings, a similar conception to the life-breath of the Old Testament. However, according to Hehn, it is of cardinal significance that “the concept of the spirit as developed by the Old Testament is unique to Israel. No texts in the Egyptian literature attribute the life-breath to the ‘spirit of the gods’ ” (Hehn, “Zum Problem Des Geistes,” 216–18; Hildebrandt, Old Testament Theology, 4).