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)
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רוּחַ is one of the most semantically layered words in the Hebrew Bible, carrying three interlocking meanings that cannot always be separated: wind (the invisible, powerful movement of air), breath (the animating principle of life), and spirit (the inner, non-material dimension of personal existence, whether human or divine). In the OT, these meanings inform each other: the wind is God's breath made visible in the.
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Full entry for רוּחַ (H7307) · Open the biblical lexicon
רוּחַ is one of the most semantically layered words in the Hebrew Bible, carrying three interlocking meanings that cannot always be separated: wind (the invisible, powerful movement of air), breath (the animating principle of life), and spirit (the inner, non-material dimension of personal existence, whether human or divine). In the OT, these meanings.
The BSB source-word alignment has 378 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the Spirit (46), spirit (28), wind (26), the wind (22), My Spirit (17).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (52), Isaiah (51), Psalms (39), Job (31).
רוּחַ is one of the most semantically layered words in the Hebrew Bible, carrying three interlocking meanings that cannot always be separated: wind (the invisible, powerful movement of air), breath (the animating principle of life), and spirit (the inner, non-material dimension of personal existence, whether human or divine). In the OT, these meanings inform each other: the wind is God's breath made visible in the world; human breath is the divine life-principle given at creation; the Spirit of God is the divine rûaḥ at work in creation, prophecy, and renewal.
The theological range of rûaḥ is vast. At creation, the rûaḥ of God hovers over the waters (Gen 1:2). At the creation of human life, God breathes his rûaḥ/nĕšāmāh into the clay and the human becomes a living soul (Gen 2:7). The rûaḥ comes upon judges, prophets, and kings to empower them for special tasks (Judg 3:10; 1 Sam 10:10; Isa 61:1). And the prophets anticipate a future outpouring: God will put his rûaḥ within his people as the sign of the new covenant (Ezek 36:26-27; Joel 2:28).
The distinctively theological use is the rûaḥ YHWH — the Spirit of the Lord — which acts as the agent of creation, the source of prophetic speech, the power of charismatic leadership, and the animating presence of the new age. The NT's pneuma is the direct Greek heir of rûaḥ, and the Pentecost event is explicitly framed as the fulfillment of the Joel 2 rûaḥ-outpouring.
רוּחַ appears approximately 389 times in the OT, making it one of the most frequent theological nouns. Key concentrations include the creation texts, the Spirit-empowerment of leaders and prophets, the prophetic texts anticipating a future outpouring (especially Ezekiel and Joel), and the wisdom literature's reflection on the human spirit as the breath-gift from God.
Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
The rûaḥ of God at the opening of creation: hovering (mĕraḥepet, an intensive participle suggesting a bird hovering over a nest) over the chaos-waters before the ordering of the world begins. This is the first appearance of rûaḥ in Scripture, and it establishes the pattern that governs all subsequent uses: the divine rûaḥ is the creative, ordering, life-giving presence of God at work in the material world.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
The new covenant rûaḥ promise: God will put a new rûaḥ within his people, not merely commanding obedience but transforming the inner capacity for it. The parallel with the stony/fleshy heart shows that the new rûaḥ is an interior renovation, not merely an empowerment from outside. Verse 27 completes the promise: 'I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.' The rûaḥ is both gift and agent of covenant faithfulness.
And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.
The universal outpouring of the rûaḥ as the defining sign of the eschatological age: all flesh will receive the Spirit, and all will prophesy. This breaks the OT pattern where the rûaḥ rested on specific individuals for specific tasks — prophet, judge, king. The new age is marked by the democratization of rûaḥ. Peter's Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:17-18) quotes this passage directly as the interpretation of what is happening at Pentecost.
The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,
The servant's anointing with the rûaḥ YHWH for a specific mission: good news to the poor, release to the captive, the year of the Lord's favor. This is the passage Jesus reads in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19), stopping to declare: 'today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.' The rûaḥ-anointing of the servant is the precise anointing that rests on Jesus — his baptism is a rûaḥ-anointing for the same messianic mission.
Cast me not away from Your presence; take not Your Holy Spirit from me.
David's petition in the great penitential Psalm: do not take your rûaḥ haqqōdeš from me. The 'holy Spirit' (rûaḥ qādôsh) appears explicitly here and in Isaiah 63:10-11 — the characterization of the divine rûaḥ by holiness is rare in the OT but signals what the NT will make central. The petition shows that the rûaḥ is not merely an impersonal force but a divine presence that can be grieved and withdrawn — and whose continued presence is the deepest desire of the repentant heart.
Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and tell the breath that this is what the Lord God says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, so that they may live!”
The valley of dry bones: rûaḥ as both wind (the four winds) and life-giving breath commanded to fill the dead. The vision is explicitly interpreted as the national restoration of Israel (v.11: 'these bones are the whole house of Israel'), but the image reaches beyond historical restoration to eschatological resurrection. The rûaḥ that animated the first human (Gen 2:7) is the same rûaḥ that will re-animate the dead — resurrection as a second creation.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Invisible animating force: from physical wind/breath to spiritual presence, divine agency, and human consciousness.
Invisible animating force: from physical wind/breath to spiritual presence, divine agency, and human consciousness.
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) BDB: breath Usage: air, anger, blast, breath, × cool, courage, mind, × quarter, × side, spirit(-ual), tempest, × vain, (whirl-) wind(-y).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 8 selected witnesses from 378 lexical occurrence verses.
Trustworthiness flows from inner moral character. Hosea 12:1-6
The Messiah’s authority and character flow from the Spirit’s abiding presence. Hosea 4:11-19
Giving birth to wind underscores futility without divine action. Hosea 4:11-19
Marks the divine source of renewal and transformation. Isaiah 11:1-10
The spirit of judgment and burning underscores that purification is accomplished by God’s active power. Isaiah 26:12-18
Symbolizes the insubstantial nature of false gods. Isaiah 32:9-20
Signals divine empowerment and renewal. Isaiah 4:2-6
Highlights divine empowerment in redemptive sending. Isaiah 41:21-29
Symbol of emptiness and futility.
Describes controlling impulse of idolatry.
Wind imagery signals impending dispersal judgment.
Greek words that correspond to or develop the meaning of this Hebrew word in the New Testament.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The theological power of rûaḥ comes precisely from its refusal to stay in a single semantic lane. Wind, breath, and spirit are not three separate meanings that happen to share a word; they are three dimensions of the same reality: the invisible, life-giving, powerful movement of God. The rûaḥ is how the transcendent God acts within the world without ceasing to be transcendent.
He does not appear in fire or earthquake or great wind — but he is often in the still small voice, and yet his rûaḥ fills the valley of dry bones with life. The OT's rûaḥ theology is built on a progression: the rûaḥ at creation (hovering over the waters), the rûaḥ at human creation (breathed into the clay), the rûaḥ given to specific individuals for specific tasks, and finally the great prophetic promise — the rûaḥ poured out on all flesh.
The Pentecost event is not a new thing; it is the fulfillment of the oldest rûaḥ trajectory in Scripture. For the preacher, this means that pneumatology (the theology of the Spirit) is not a specialist topic for charismatic contexts; it is the story of how the God of creation continues to create, how the God of exodus continues to liberate, how the God of prophecy continues to speak.
The congregation that understands rûaḥ understands why the Spirit matters: not as a supernatural supplement to ordinary Christianity but as the divine breath without which there is no life at all.
Ezek.36.26
The feminine gender of rûaḥ is theologically significant in that it resists the easy masculine-only framing of divine activity — though the rûaḥ's gender does not in itself make the Spirit feminine in the Trinitarian sense. The word generates the adjective rûaḥ in constructs like rûaḥ qādôsh (holy spirit, Ps 51:11; Isa 63:10-11), rûaḥ YHWH (the Spirit of the Lord), rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm (the Spirit of God).
The parallel term nĕšāmāh (H5397, breath) shares the life-giving dimension but lacks the wind-dimension; the two sometimes appear in parallelism (Job 27:3: 'as long as my breath is in me, and the rûaḥ of God is in my nostrils'). In later prophetic texts, the rûaḥ begins to be personalized: it can be quenched (Isa 63:10), it can rest and lead (Isa 63:14), it can be poured out (Joel 2:28) — these quasi-personal attributes lay the groundwork for the NT's full Trinitarian pneumatology.
The NT's pneumatology is built on the rûaḥ foundation. The baptism of Jesus is a rûaḥ-anointing (the Spirit descending as a dove, the divine voice echoing Isa 42:1) that inaugurates the servant mission of Isa 61. The Pentecost event is the Joel 2 rûaḥ-outpouring, poured out on all flesh, fulfilling the promise that the Spirit would not be restricted to prophets and kings.
Paul's 'the Spirit of God dwells in you' (1 Cor 3:16; Rom 8:9) is the new covenant rûaḥ of Ezek 36:27 internalized in the community. John 20:22 — Jesus breathes on the disciples and says 'receive the Holy Spirit' — is a deliberate new-creation echo of Gen 2:7: as God breathed rûaḥ into the clay to make the first human, the risen Christ breathes the Spirit into the disciples to make the new humanity.
The rûaḥ-pneuma trajectory is the most continuous thread in the Bible's doctrine of God at work in the world.
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