English has three words where Hebrew has one. The air that moves across a field is “wind”. The air that moves in and out of a living body is “breath”. The life and presence of God, and the inner life of a person, is “spirit”. In Hebrew all three are רוּחַ, rûaḥ. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, all three are πνεῦμα, pneuma.
For most verses this causes no trouble. Context makes the sense plain, and the translator picks the English word that fits. But a few passages use the word on purpose in more than one sense at once. Those are the places where translation has to give something up, and where a reader who knows the original word sees more.
Genesis 1:2: Spirit or wind?
The second verse of the Bible describes the world before God speaks: the earth formless and empty, darkness over the deep, and וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים, rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm, over the waters. Most English Bibles, from the King James Version on, say “the Spirit of God”. Some modern ones say “a wind from God”, among them the NRSV and the Jewish Publication Society’s translation.
The choice is a real one. Open Word Bible makes it in a meaning decision, marked uncertain and given a footnote:
The earth was without form and empty. Darkness lay over the surface of the deep, while the Spirit of God hovered above the waters.
The record sets out the case for “wind” fairly. Hebrew sometimes uses “of God” to mean “mighty”, so the phrase could mean a very great wind. And God does send a wind over the waters after the flood, in Genesis 8:1. But the decision chooses “the Spirit of God” for two reasons. Elsewhere “the spirit of God” is God’s own Spirit at work, as when he fills Bezalel with skill (Exodus 31:3). And the verb that follows, מְרַחֶ֖פֶת, “hovering”, is a rare word used in Deuteronomy 32:11 of an eagle hovering over its young. That suits a living presence better than a wind. The record also points to Psalm 33:6, which links God’s word and his breath in the making of the heavens.
The footnote gives “a wind from God” and “a mighty wind”, so the reader can see what the other choice would have been.
Genesis 8:1: wind, with an echo
The flood story picks up the word. After the waters have covered the earth for months, God remembers Noah:
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to go down.
Here the word, ר֨וּחַ֙, is plainly wind. It blows and the water goes down. Every level says “wind”. But our record notes the echo: this is the word of Genesis 1:2, and as at the beginning, God’s rûaḥ moves over the waters and dry land is about to appear. A new creation begins. A reader of the English sees two different words, Spirit and wind, and might miss that the Hebrew repeats itself. The record exists to point it out.
Genesis 2:7: a different word for breath
When God forms the first human from dust in Genesis 2, a reader might expect rûaḥ again. It is not there. The verse says that God breathed into his nostrils נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים, “the breath of life”, and the word for breath is נְשָׁמָה, nəšāmâ.
Then the LORD God shaped the man out of dust from the ground. He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Nəšāmâ is narrower than rûaḥ. It means breath, and rarely anything else. Our record says that the man’s life comes from God’s breath, “given to no other creature in the account”. The two words are close partners, though. In Genesis 6:17 God will destroy every creature that has “the breath of life”, and there the Hebrew uses rûaḥ. Job 33:4 puts them side by side: the spirit of God has made me, the breath of the Almighty gives me life. The idea is the same in both: life is God’s breath, lent to his creatures.
Psalm 104: breath taken and given
Psalm 104 makes that idea a song. It praises God for feeding every creature, and then says what happens when he withdraws:
If you turn your face away, they panic; if you withdraw their breath, they breathe their last and go back to the dust they came from.
When you send your spirit out, they come into being, and you make the face of the land new.
The same word is “their breath” in verse 29 and “your spirit” in verse 30. Our record keeps the link: God takes back the breath he gave, and sends it out again to make new creatures. The decision on verse 30 is marked uncertain. It chooses “your life-giving breath” as the sense, and notes that many readers also see here the Spirit of God at work in creation, as in Genesis 1:2. So Literal and Balanced write “spirit” with a small letter, leaving both readings open, and Readable says “your breath of life”, keeping the link with verse 29.
That small letter is itself a decision. Hebrew and Greek manuscripts have no capital letters. Whether “spirit” is written “Spirit” in English is always the translator’s call, and our records state it where it matters.
Ezekiel 37: one word, ten times
The fullest play on the word comes in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. Our record for the first verse counts it: rûaḥ is used ten times in Ezekiel 37:1–14, in all three of its senses. The Spirit of the LORD carries Ezekiel to the valley (verse 1). God promises to put breath into the bones (verse 5). Then the prophet is told:
Then he told me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to it, The Lord GOD says this: Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe into these slain, so that they may live.”
In this one verse the Hebrew has the word four times: הָר֑וּחַ is “the breath” addressed, and רוּחוֹת֙ is “the winds”, the four directions. The record explains the play. Ezekiel speaks to the rûaḥ as breath and calls it from the four rûḥôt, the four winds; the wind becomes breath for the bodies. And then, in verse 14, the meaning comes out:
I will put my Spirit within you so that you live, and I will set you down on your own soil. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, declares the LORD.”
The breath that made the bodies live is now named as the LORD’s own Spirit. The dead people of Israel, cut off in exile, will live again by God’s Spirit in them.
English cannot keep one word through all of this. Our rendering decisions choose “Spirit” in verse 1, “breath” in verses 5–10, “winds” for the four directions and “Spirit” again in verse 14, the same at every level. To make up for the loss, the record for verse 5 carries a footnote: “breath” there is rûaḥ, one word for breath, wind and Spirit, and behind every one of these renderings stands one Hebrew word. The record also notes the echo of Genesis 2:7. As God formed the first man and then breathed into him, so here he first rebuilds the bodies and then gives them breath. Israel’s restoration is a new creation.
John 3: born of the Spirit
Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 uses the Greek word the same way. Nicodemus cannot understand how a person could be born again, and Jesus answers that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born “of water and the Spirit” (3:5). What is born of flesh is flesh, he says, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit (3:6). Then:
The wind blows where it wants to. You hear its sound, yet you do not know where it has come from or where it is heading. That is how it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The verse begins with τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ, “the wind blows where it wants”, and ends with “born of the Spirit”. The noun is the same, and the verb “blows”, πνέω, comes from the same root. Our meaning decision says so: one word, with a play on its two senses. Jesus speaks of the wind and means the Spirit as well. As no one controls or tracks the wind, though its effects are plain, so it is with the Spirit’s work in those who are born of him. The record points back to Ezekiel 37, where wind, breath and Spirit give life to the dead, and a teacher of Israel like Nicodemus might have been expected to hear the echo (3:10).
Again, English must choose. The rendering decision is “wind” at the start and “Spirit” at the end, at every level, because, as it says, one word cannot carry both senses here. A footnote shows the reader that the two English words are one Greek word. The decision adds a small point about pronouns: “it” refers to the wind; the Spirit is never called “it”.
The record lists two other readings as alternatives, “Spirit” in both places and “wind” in both places. Its choice keeps the comparison Jesus is drawing: the wind is the picture, the Spirit is the reality.
“He”, “she” or “it”?
That remark about “it” touches a question readers sometimes ask. Grammatical gender is not the same thing as sex, and the three languages do not agree. In Hebrew rûaḥ is usually feminine, so its verbs and adjectives take feminine forms; the participle “hovering” in Genesis 1:2 is feminine for that reason. In Greek pneuma is neuter, like many nouns for things. English has no grammatical gender for nouns at all, so it has to choose a pronoun by meaning.
When John’s Gospel calls the Spirit “the Advocate” in chapters 14 to 16, the Greek uses masculine pronouns, partly because the word for Advocate is masculine. English Bibles have long said “he” for the Holy Spirit, as Christian teaching speaks of the Spirit as personal. Our records follow that use. The wind is “it”; the Spirit, as the records for John 14:26 and 16:13 put it, is never “it” in this translation, but “he”, with the same capital-letter setting as pronouns for the Father and the Son. Those records also note that the masculine Greek pronoun is explained by grammar, so it does not prove the point on its own. Neither the feminine Hebrew noun nor the neuter Greek one is a claim that God’s Spirit is female or impersonal. They are simply how those languages work.
John 20:22: breathed on them
John’s Gospel returns to the idea at the end. On the evening of the resurrection, Jesus comes to his disciples:
Having said this, he breathed on them and told them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
The verb ἐνεφύσησεν, “he breathed on”, is rare. Our record notes, in a footnote marked uncertain, that the same form is used in the Greek Old Testament of God breathing life into the first man in Genesis 2:7, and the verb appears in the Greek of Ezekiel 37:9. The echo suggests a new creation: the risen Jesus gives new life by his Spirit. The record is careful to add that the text does not say this in so many words.
What a reader can do
A translation can only print one word at a time. When the original says something with one word that English must say with two or three, something is lost. Open Word Bible does not hide that loss. Its meaning decisions say what each use of the word means; its rendering decisions say which English word it chose and why; and footnotes at Genesis 1:2, Ezekiel 37:5 and John 3:8 tell the reader that the different English words stand for one word in the original. (For other places where wordplay cannot be carried across, see Wordplay that cannot be translated.)
A reader who knows this can read Genesis 1, Psalm 104, Ezekiel 37 and John 3 together, and hear what an ancient reader heard: the wind over the waters, the breath in the first human’s nostrils, the breath that comes into the dead bones, and the Spirit that gives new birth are, in the Bible’s own language, one word.
Open Genesis 1, Ezekiel 37 or John 3 and tap a verse to see the full records.