Breath

In the UPDV, breath is at once the hallmark of every living creature and an attribute of Yahweh himself. The same word names what fills a human nostril for a moment and what issues from the mouth of God to make worlds, judge nations, and raise the dead. The lines below trace those threads from creation to the valley of dry bones.

The Breath of Life in the Creature

The first man becomes a living being only when the breath of God enters him. "And Yahweh God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7). Elihu generalises the same gift: "The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4).

Because life is a loaned breath, its withdrawal is death. In the flood, "all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of all that was on the dry land, died" (Gen 7:22). Daniel confronts Belshazzar with the same dependence: it is "the God in whose hand is your breath, and are all your ways" whom the king has refused to glorify (Dan 5:23).

The Frailty of the One Who Breathes

Because the creature's breath is on lease, the prophet places no weight on him. "Cease yourselves from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for what is he to be accounted of?" (Isa 2:22). Human breath is the measure of human consequence — a thin column of air, no surer than the next inhalation.

The Breath of God in Creation and Storm

What sustains the creature also fashions the cosmos. The heavens themselves answer to the divine breath: "By the word of Yahweh were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (Ps 33:6). Even the winter belongs to the same exhalation: "By the breath of God ice is given; And the width of the waters is straitened" (Job 37:10).

When Yahweh acts in storm and theophany, the language stays the same. The sea is laid bare "By the rebuke of Yahweh, At the blast of the breath [Speech] of his nostrils" (2 Sam 22:16); the parallel psalm names "the blast of the breath of your nostrils" as what uncovers "the foundations of the world" (Ps 18:15).

The Breath of God in Judgement

The breath that gives life can withdraw it. Eliphaz states the principle bluntly: "By the breath of God they perish, And by the blast of his anger are they consumed" (Job 4:9). The wicked man's end in Job is the same exhalation: "And by the breath of [God's] mouth he will go away" (Job 15:30).

The promised messianic king carries the same weapon. "He will strike the earth with [the Speech of] his mouth; and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked" (Isa 11:4). What is gentle enough to fill a child's lungs is, when Yahweh wills it, sufficient to undo the wicked.

The Breath That Raises the Dead

Ezekiel's vision turns the picture once more. Over a valley of bones, the prophet is told to summon breath as Yahweh once breathed into Adam: "Look, I will cause breath to enter into you⁺, and you⁺ will live" (Ezek 37:5). The summons is then issued directly: "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live" (Ezek 37:9). The first creation's breath of life becomes the pattern for resurrection.