“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and BREATHED into his nostrils the BREATH OF LIFE; and man became a LIVING SOUL.”-Genesis 2:7
Let’s take a look at the words I underlined in red.
breathed=naphach
Breath of Life=Neshemash chayyim
Living soul(being)=Chaya nephesh
Remember that the Hebrew language is based on root words.
From one root word, there are many offshoots from that one word with related meanings.
Notice the similarity between naphach, neshemah, and nephesh.
They all refer to God’s life-spirit being supernaturally placed into man.
The point here is that life itself is something that comes from outside of our four dimensional universe and can only originate from God.
In this day and age, we have evolutionists and other scientists trying to prove that we can take things that are not living and given enough time (billions and billions of years they say) and the right set of circumstances life can somehow spontaneously erupt minus any divine intervention.
However, no scientist has yet had any luck proving their theories of spontaneous generation and never will.
Because life comes from God.
Let’s take a look at the term “Breath of Life”.
In Hebrew it is Neshemah chayyim.
Do you recall that whenever you want to make a Hebrew word plural, you add -im to the noun.
So technically speaking, this could be translated the “breath of lives”.
This indicates that more than one life was inserted into Adam.
However, what kind of “lives”?
Well, this is something that theologians have struggled to understand for centuries.
One kind of life could be the basic life force that is common to all living things and an other kind of life could be the spirit that allows us to commune with God.
The Hebrews called this invisible essence that allows man to commune with God the Ruach Hakodesh.
Ruach Hakodesh means the “Holy Spirit”.
Another interesting question that Hebrews have struggled with is “is the soul the same as the spirit?” When we look at the original Hebrew, we can see that both animals and humans are nephesh (living beings).
However, only humans are able to receive the Ruach Hakodesh.
So we can conclude from this that only humans have the capacity to commune with God.
The Hebrew word, “lives”,as you stated is plural, and you asked a very important question, basically, what were the two lives God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. We would suggest that the first was spiritual. Adam enjoyed fellowship with God, walking with him in the cool of the day. Secondly, Adam was physically alive and was self-consciences or aware that he existed, as he was created in the ‘soul-image’ of his Creator from the dust/clay of the earth. Adam became a living ‘ruach’. with a clay body.
Paul states that we were once”‘dead’ in trespasses and sin, you hath He made alive”. Before they trusted in Christ, they were dead {spiritually], but physically alive. Christ ‘tabernacles’ in us by His Spirit when we put our faith in God the Son Who was sent into the world to save sinners, for all sinned and fall short of His glory. “His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth” Also, “…any who hath not the Spirit of Christ is ‘none of His’.”
How He loved us because, ” God SO loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that WHOSOEVER believeth in Him hath(right now) everlasting life.”
Hi Yochanan, Thank you for elaborating on my post. Your interpretation is clear and makes good sense. Shalom!-Rich