BibleProject - The Spirit of Life and Death

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Spirit of God E2 — The word we translate in English as “spirit” is ruakh in the Hebrew Bible, and it can mean spirit, wind, breath, and mind. In multiple passages where ruakh functions as “breath,” the biblical authors invite us to reflect on God’s life-giving power and also on our own frailty. Why are these two ideas so closely tied together? In this episode, Jon and Tim reflect on God’s divine breath that creates and sustains all living things, including mortal human beings from the dust. CHAPTERS Recap of the Meaning of Ruakh (0:0-9:16) The Breath of Life for Dust Creatures in Genesis 2 (9:16-20:03) Divine Breath and Human Dust in Job (20:03-29:25) God Giving and Taking Away His Ruakh in Psalm 104 (29:35-41:14) Human Mortality in Ecclesiastes 3 (41:14-52:20) OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT View this episode’s official transcript. REFERENCED RESOURCES Check out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here. SHOW MUSIC “at the pictures” by Lofi Sunday, Cassidy Godwin “Coffee Under The Palm Tree” by Lofi Sunday, Zairis TéJion “Live and Love” by Lofi Sunday, Tbabz “It's Gonna Be Alright” by Lofi Sunday, Marc Vanparla BibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITS Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Bible Project podcast. Today, we continue our conversation on the Spirit of God, or in Hebrew, Ruach Elohim. One way of defining Ruach, it's a invisible, personal, life-giving energy. It's the thing animating every living thing. You only get two sentences into the Bible before you encounter God as Ruach, hovering over the dark abysmal waters ready to bring order. This is the biblical portrait of God's spirit, creating, and holding every word. everything together. Ruach is intimately involved and present with all creations sustaining its

existence moment to moment. Last week's discussion oriented us to how the ancients thought of Ruach. It's the power that rushes through the trees. It's the energy we breathe into our lungs. It's the vitality that we have that lets us comprehend the world. In the Bible, this energy is a gift. And it's the very life presence of God's self. Humans cannot exist without. This is the biblical author's way of exploring humans as mortal as not sustaining their own existence. But the story of the Bible begins with an invitation to experience eternal life. Whatever immortal life that humans are going to experience is not something they have of their own nature. It's something that is given to them as a gift.

Because humanity cannot exist without God's ruach, its very presence reminds us of our own frailty. Job refers to God's breath as the only thing keeping him alive, but also it's the sign that he's not even sure how much longer he'll be alive because it's not his possession. It was something that was gifted to him. Today, we examine the inherent mortality of humans and the marvelous gift of God's ruach. Ruach is such an unmerited, undeserved, uncontrolled gift

that it should humble me. Thanks for joining us. here we go. Hey Tim. Hey, John. We're continuing this conversation on the Spirit of God. Yes, we are. And what we've attempted to do just briefly in our last conversation was...

We're not so briefly. Yeah. Try to get into the ancient imagination of this word, spirit. And actually, this is a pillar of ours that we talk about. The Bible is ancient literature. Yes, right. And so it's an exercise of not bringing our own present day understanding of, words and concepts and imposing them on the Bible, but trying to empathetically get into the

imagination of biblical authors and the way they viewed the world. It's challenging sometimes. Yeah, it's an exercise in extreme empathy. Yeah. Yeah, I just, it's about imagining the feelings of another person. Yeah. But this is about imagining the ideas of another person. I've actually used the phrase intellectual empathy. Yeah. There's a little bit of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It says what we're doing, specifically around the word spirit, but also our word wind and breath and perhaps even mind. And there's one Hebrew word. Yeah. Ruach.

So what does it mean to think of all those things together and how does the Bible use that word? And what's your summary of our conversation? One way of defining Ruach trying to capture a definition, which is like capturing water with your hand. It refers to something invisible. You cannot see it. You see its effects. That's true of wind and breath. Yeah.

And mind. It's personal. It's based on a conviction of the biblical authors that there is someone who is the creator of all it is and the sustainer who's intimately involved and present with all creation sustaining its existence moment to moment. So it's a invisible, personal, life-giving energy. So life-giving means it's the thing animating every living thing, but energy, and it's a thing animating non-living things that is like wind in the trees. You know, wind could knock down a tree.

It can move waters, whole bodies of water. It can be moved by the wind. So invisible, personal, life-giving, and animating energy. Yeah. It was really helpful for me. There was a moment where you said, when we think of the wind,

we think of something physical because we understand the physical nature of air. Yeah. But an ancient thinker did not, it was more like a, what you said, like a force. Like we think of gravitational force

or these kind of things. Yeah. In our modern, contemporary cosmology, the slot that is occupied by these mysterious, all-pervasive, reality-sustaining forces. Gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear, is the slot occupied by God's Ruach in the biblical author's imagination. Now, it's not precise, it's not an exact, but it's pretty close. Because in our modern mindset, those forces may or may not point us to a person. more often they're just stated to be impersonal laws.

So insert God's transcendent personal being into our concept of modern forces. And we're very close to the concept of Rewalk in the Bible. It's pervasive. It comes from the one who is above all things, but it also is the way that that one who is above and beyond all is personally present, sustaining everything that is.

Yeah. And so this then frame invites us into some mysteries. Yeah. Which is when I see the wind moving through a tree, am I seeing God's personal energy? Or am I seeing God sending what I would call an impersonal force? Yeah, something distinct from God, right? And I want to make a clear distinction.

Yeah. And are we saying the ancient imagination is saying, yeah, there's a distinction, but don't make it so sharp. Yeah, I mean, these are almost impossible mysteries. But there has to be an absolute difference between God and creation from one point of view. I'm not all that God is. Yeah. Like very clearly. Yeah, okay.

Ask my wife. Or my kids. You know what I mean? really quite a frail, mortal, fragile being on many levels. So there's an absolute distinction between me as a weak little temporary creature and the infinite, eternal creator of all. But the only way for anything temporary and finite and small and frail to exist is to be so closely sustained and held in existence by God's Ruach

that another way to say it is like the way Paul says it. that in God, we live and move and have our being. In God, he says. Or like he says in a little prayer at the end of Ephesians, the Father who is over all and through all and in all things. Overall, through all, in all. And he's holding together things that we find almost impossible to hold together. He's trying to.

And Ruach is one of the ways, the biblical authors are naming what is from our point of view like a paradox. Yeah. Okay. So invisible, personal, life-giving energy. Okay. What I'd like to do in this conversation is really hone in on ways in the Hebrew Bible, the Ruach is inviting us into the meeting place of life and death or existence and

non-existence. So spirit is associated with. with life. Breath is associated with life. Yeah. And I think what struck me in new ways was that in many cases where Roach in the Hebrew Bible is associated with life, in the context, it's very much also associated with the unpredictable nature of life and death. I don't appreciate what you're getting at. So let's just get into it, maybe. Deal. Let's start on page two.

Okay. Okay. So there's two narratives at the beginning of the book of Genesis. The first is the same. seven-day creation story, and God's Ruach is there, hovering, fluttering over the waters. The second narrative begins in Genesis 2, verse 4, with a little heading, saying these are the birthings of the skies and the land, and it begins with a lifeless desert, and there's no plants, no human, and no water. So God provides a spring that pops up out of the ground. Surprise. And when the spring waters saturates the ground, the narrative doesn't explicitly say, but it's pretty obvious what you're supposed to imagine.

Mix water with dirt. You get mud. What has been my entire backyard for about a decade with my boys is a huge mud pit that they love to dig in. So clay or mud. So what we're told then is something God does with that wet dirt. Genesis 2 verse 7. Then Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh being the one who is. That's what it means.

the personal covenant name of Yahweh with Israel. Yahweh Elohim formed, it's the word used to describe what potters do with clay. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, Jeremiah 18, kind of most well known. So he formed Adam, the human, from Afar Minha Adama. So afar is dust from the ground. So we're talking about the topsoil. Oh, okay.

And dust is the most common English word in our English translations used to describe this, but when I think of dust, I think of dry, not wet. Right. For me, dust is the opposite of wet. Yeah. So this is topsoil. Topsoil. It's the top layer.

Moist topsoil. And the ground is the word Adamma, which has all the letters of the word Adam in it. Human from the humus. Yeah. It's one way to talk about it. And then dust is referring to the topsoil. Okay. So human comes from the ground, molded from the ground.

Yeah. So that's one thing. Got formed human from the topsoil. Does that word human from the humus? Humus can mean earth. I think humus is an old English word. It's a topsoil. Is it?

Oh, cool. Also, the same letters. As hummus? It's one of the most delicious food. It really is. History of human food making. But anyway. Dibest,

was different than the English which refers to topsoil. Okay. Yahweh El-Heim formed human from the topsoil of the Adama and he breathed into his nostrils the nishmat chayim,

breath of life. And human became a nepheshchayah, a living being. So breathe and breath here, neither one of them's ruach, but they're synonyms. So breathe is from na'affach

and then breath is from neshama and they more precisely refer to inhalation, inhaling or exhaling. So ruach can be the stuff in the trees in the hummingbird, in me, and the stuff in between and the verb, breathe here and neshima breath

is referring to that stuff when it's coming in and out of my nose and mouth and throat. Okay. Inhalation or something like that. Yeah. Exhaling. Exhalation.

Why use a different word? Yeah. Maybe we're emphasizing when the ruach of God becomes a gift to the human person, so in a sense it becomes their ruach. Uh-huh. We're emphasizing the human experience and possession of the ruach within their own body. Okay. And Nashama signals that.

This is the most common synonym of Ruach. It appears two dozen times in the Hebrew Bible and often in interesting ways. So this is one of them. So the dust here just signals the topsoil, like in the level of the narrative. And it comes up out of the ground. So on one level, humans are earthlings. Like we come from the ground. What we know about the ground is that it's a neutral canvas that,

that doesn't produce life in and of itself. It's material that cannot, this is in the narrative, because it begins with a lifeless desert. And needed something more. Needed something outside of itself. The water of God. But then when combined with that life-giving substance,

it can generate life. And in this narrative, it's the water that God brings up out of the ground. But then also, humans need more than just the clay, like they're as it were in material they also need some life source just like the ground need something outside of itself

to make place life the human once formed needs something outside of itself and that's the role of the divine breath so I think it's very clearly God's breath God's breath yeah but that becomes the human

thus the word neshima it becomes the human's breath native to the human as a living creature theirs so to speak quote their breath yeah so this is the biblical author's way of exploring humans as frail as mortal as not sustaining their own existence or originating their own existence for some reason growing up i had this image of humans being immortal in and another ourselves oh yeah and i remember you talking here about look at how the narrative

actually makes you think about it. It's not that the human is immortal, the human is dust, but then is given life. Yeah, here, given life. Yeah. Like just base life. Yeah, just base life.

And then later in the story is given opportunity to eat of eternal life, which is a gift from God outside of him. So sorry to aside. But I think that's important because whatever immortal life that humans are going to experience is not something they have

of their own nature. It's something that is given to them as a gift. Yeah. Now, humans are the kind of beings within the Bible that are capable of living forever, and in that sense, we image God. But we are also dust. Actually, we're to it.

We're right to the thing that I want to highlight. So this is the beginning of the Eden story. If we turn to the end of the Eden story, after Adam and Eve's folly at the tree of knowing good and bad, when God sings his poetic lament over the man and the woman, what he draws to their attention is that because of their folly, they have introduced a grief into the very processes that God gave them for the gift of life. So he highlights reproduction for women conception,

and the raising of children will be fraught with grief. Many of our English translations say pain, like labor pains, but that's not what it refers to or means, but grief. And then when he refers to the man, he talks about how the ground is cursed, and in that same grievous toil, you will eat from it all the days of your life. So instead of garden existence, where God just overabundance popping up out of the ground, to get abundance out of the ground now, you're going to have to. A lot of work. A lot of work, and it's a work that will wear you out. In verse 19, Genesis 3, by the sweat of your face you will eat your bread, until you return to the Adama, the ground.

Because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you will return. So from dust to dust. That's the picture here. Yeah. And so then what happens to this? God breath that we were given. I know. It's a great question that the narrative raises, right? Yeah.

Apparently, you give it up. So I'm just going to stick within the story world given to us. If I received it as a gift that was not my own, then when I go back to the ground, what else does that mean but a surrendering of the ruach of the breath? And if you watch someone die, you watch them take their last breath. It's actually what happens.

Yeah, and any creature. Yeah, you surrender the Ruach. I think what's significant is that this close association of dust and spirit is really important. Okay. Because what you'll find is that when dust or dirt is brought up elsewhere throughout the Hebrew Bible, I'm about to show you a bunch of examples, spirit and dirt or spirit and dust often appear in the same context. And the spirit or breath primarily signals a creature's fragile existence.

In a ways that more years I've sat with it, it feels really significant. Okay. So maybe that's just that Ruach, this divine breath spirit, as should signal in our minds when we come across it in the Bible, as much the miracle of life, that life exists, period, and that I am alive, It's just a sheer miracle. And at the same time, the very fact that I have life should signal to me that I'm dying and that I'm fragile and mortal.

And my existence really isn't my own. And both of those feelings I think Ruach has meant to signal in certain passages. So should we just look at some? Yeah, let's look at it. So in Genesis chapter 18, there's a moment when God told Abrams. is that he's of Sodom and Gomorrah. There's so much injustice happening and the cry of the oppressed has risen up to him

that he's going to destroy these cities. And Abraham steps in and he says, wait a minute, you're the judge of all the land. Won't you do what's right? What if there's people who do right by you and neighbor there in that city? And so when he introduces that intercession, what he says is, please, my lord,

I am being so bold to speak to you even though I am dust and ashes. Yeah. That's how dust works in the Bible. Okay. I am dust, and so are you. Yeah. So this is used to much effect in the book of Job.

There's many places where humans as dustlings are referred to. Here's just a couple examples. In Job chapter 4 verse 19, Job calls humans, people who dwell in houses of clay whose foundations are in the dust. Hmm. Yeah. So your body is a little clay house. And the foundation of your little clay dwelling that is your body is dust.

Yeah. So it feels real. This is what I was trying to say in the last conversation. You and I think of ourselves as real. Yeah, of course I do. In one sense we are. Why don't you tell me I'm not real? It's kind of freaking me out.

But dude, because we're like we're going to die. And in a hundred years. Like no one's gonna even remember anything about us. It will be like we never were. What you and I are is so fragile and temporary. Okay, but that's different than real. Fragile and temporary. Sure.

I think I know what you're saying, though. Yeah. For you and I to have these experiences as real creatures, there must be something, or in biblical thought, some one, someone who's the ground of it all, who precedes us, will be long after us, and who is so intimately related to every single micro part of whatever it is that I am, keeping it all going. So to whatever degree you're real, that thing is more real. Yes, that's right.

That's what you mean. It's a relative real. You and I are relatively real. And that's what these passages are trying to say. We live in clay houses with dust foundations. The foundation of my house. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. Southeast Portland, a house that was built like 110 years ago.

When we got the house inspection, it was the one thing that made us be like, should we do this? Is the foundation material is made out of river rock sand from the Willamette River, like right down a mile from a house. Yeah. And if I were to just start digging into it, just with a hand shovel, I could just start to dig. Break it apart? Yes. Yeah. Yes. But then the inspector told us, yeah, every house in this entire part of town is built with this. Yeah.

So I was like, yeah, so what about when the big one, the earthquake comes? And he's like, yeah, this is all toast. Because it's basically just being held together by it being compacted by gravity, the house lying on it. So it keeps it sturdy. Yeah. But the moment, that foundation in the dust. People listening, what you mean by the big one? The big earthquake.

We live in constant kind of psychological terror. Yeah. Of the fact that one day, any day, a massive earthquake could just destroy everything over here. We live in the Cascadia subduction zone. Yeah. Two huge tectaneclades. To dust, we will return. Yeah.

Yeah, man. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yep. That's it. Okay. So I'm going to read Job chapter 10, verse 8 and 9, but I say them as my own words. This is Job talking to God.

God, your hands fashioned me. You made me all together. And then Job says, look at my life now. You've also destroyed me. Please remember that you made me as clay. And are you turning me back into dust again? So Job's talking about his suffering and all the terrible things that happened to him. And he's, this is the classic problem of evil then for a conception of the world

and of God that is core to the Jewish and Christian tradition, which is God is the source of all reality. If all reality only is real, relatively real, because it participates in God. What is God's relationship to all of the terrible pain and suffering and evil in creation? Right? That's the yeah, the classic not. Problem of evil. Problem of evil. And Job's exploring that in his own way. And he says, listen, you made me like clay. What this means is this is saying, what human existence is in its nature is fragile and mortal.

It doesn't sustain its own existence. The only way it would even exist. And the only way it will have any continuing existence is if God continues to provide the gift of the ruach. In other words, Ruach is as much a signal of life as it is of the fragility of life. And this is why, especially in the book of Job, Job refers to God's breath as the only thing keeping him alive, but also it's the sign that he's not even sure how much longer he'll be alive, because it's not his possession. It was something that was gifted to him. the nature of breath as gift

both refers to the miracle of life and to the fragility of life. So in chapter 27, this is one of his moments where he's pretty angry at God. And so he says, as God lives, the God who has taken away my rights,

the Almighty who has made my soul bitter, as long as I have Neshima, in me. And as long as the ruach of God is in my nostrils, I am not going to speak anything unjust. My tongue will not utter deceit. And what he goes on to say essentially to his friends is, you guys are accusing me of having done something wrong, and that's why I'm suffering. And I'm telling you, I haven't done anything wrong to deserve all this suffering. The problem isn't with me. I didn't do anything. So, however this happened, it's God's issue. And I'm going to take up my issue with God. So that's one thing. But then what he's naming is the paradox, which is that

the only way I can take up my case with God. Oh, is with breath that is a gift to me. Is that if he keeps me alive. But my whole point is that he's slowly taking away my life. But as long as I have a little bit left, I'm going to keep giving my case. As long as. As long as. So that as long as is really a way of talking about the essence of the biblical picture of human existence. It's fragile, it's contingent, dependent, impermanent, temporary. But it's also a generous gift in a miracle. But also can't be taken for granted. Yeah.

That's ruach. As long as the neshima is in me, as long as the ruach of God is the moment. my nostrils. What a bold phrase, the ruach of God in my nose. Yeah. That one's sticky. In my mind, because it really forces me

to not make a clear distinction between breath and spirit of God. Oh, sure. That's right. Yeah. It really just jams them together. Yeah, that's right. And isn't it great? It's poetry. The only real adequate way to address that.

Yeah. So, I see what you're saying, that dust is about death. So you've got ruach and then you've got dust. Oh, yes. Ruach is life. Ruach is life. The dust represents this temporary, fragile, impermanent thing. That's right.

Where the ruach is permanent. Yeah. When you think of ruach's life breath, the biblical authors also want you to think about our nature as dust and hold those two in our minds. Yeah, as soon as you start really reflecting on, I have life because of a gift outside of me, you are just one thought away from, oh, I am dust. I'm dust. That's right. That's right. Okay. So let's look at another poem that explores this in the surprising way. And it'll be similar ideas. We're just going to run through him again, but from another poet. The poet who wrote Psalm 104. Psalm 104. It's a beautiful meditation on creation.

It represents somebody who has read and thought a lot about the seven-day creation narrative and the Eden narrative, because it joins vocabulary both together in this poem. And it's just gone through and talked about how all of the creatures in the skies, the host of heaven, like the lights in the sky and the messengers, the angels, should praise God for their existence. It went through and talked about the creatures of the land and then the creatures of the sea. It kind of just moved through from top to bottom. How they all should praise God. And how they, literally in the paragraph right before, where we're going to pick up in verse 27,

the poet was just like marveling about the feeding patterns of wild goats and rock badgers. Okay. So kind of... It's the order of creation. Mm-hmm, yeah. So verse 27 begins with all of your creatures, wait for you to give them their food in due season. Every creature on the planet, when it is hungry,

what it's longingly waiting for is the hand of God. You give to them, and they gather it up. You open your hand, and they are satisfied with Tov with good. So notice how the biblical authors actually have a nuanced way of thinking about cause and effect in the world. And so sometimes they'll talk about God as the provider or maker of something, and then five effects down the chain. You know, somebody receives something.

But often when they want to highlight God's intimacy with the world, they'll just put all of the cause effect chain in the parentheses and just go, God to creature. Your hand feeds every little rock badger. and wild mountain goat direct from God's hand. Yeah. It's a very poetic way to think of a field

growing grass as God's hand lifting up food for the animal. Yeah. And ancient people knew that like there's all sorts of minerals and seeds and things in the ground that are important and then air temperature.

And they knew about the stuff way more than you and I do. So they know there's all these other links in the chain. Yeah. but they're thinking in terms of ultimate cause. They talk about God. Okay. So verse 28, you open your hand and every creature is satisfied with goodness,

but if you hide your face, they are dismayed. So God gives with his hand, but if he hides his face, which is an image of loss of intimate connection, right? If you hide your face from another person, you're signaling a distance. there. Yeah. If you hide your face, they are dismayed. If you take away their ruach, they expire and return to the dust.

There we go. Yeah. Their breath is gone. Their ruach. They're gone. Their ruach. So you're like, oh, I guess it's theirs. We're talking about it from the angle of it being their possession, as it were.

But God can take it away and does. God can and does take it away. and they return to the dust, verse 30, but you send forth your ruach, and they are created. It's the word barra, from Genesis 1 verse 1. So we normally think of creation as being the thing that happened a long time ago,

and here create is used to refer to the new birth of every generation, of every species of living thing. So you take away their ruach, they return to the dust, You send forth your Ruach creation. So I'm looking at a bunch of wild animals. I'm observing that at some point they die and they stop breathing. And I would say as someone who believes in God who animates everything and is responsible for life,

would say God took away their ruach. Yeah. And then I watch a baby goat come into the world. and then have its first breath. Yeah. And I would say, oh, God sent forth his rock. That's right. Creation.

Creation. Let there be baby goat. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the idea. So two things must be true about the Jewish and Christian conception of God.

That God is above and beyond all the one who is. God doesn't depend on something else to exist. God is existence. So there couldn't be anything more remotely different than God than a baby goat. Like none of those things are true of the baby goat. But if God were, I mean, a language fails us. That's why poetry is so important. If God were to show his face and shine its personal light, day one, let there be light,

to bring about something that is distinct from God, but yet depends completely upon God for everything that it is, you could say that God is sending out his own ruach, that anything it is, and every new breath of life of a creature is like this intimate kiss from God. Now, of course, there's a lot of cause and effect

things that come in between. We know that, the poets know that, but they want to shrink that chain up to say, ultimately what we're really talking about, is that anything that exists, especially a living creature, only exists because God is directly creating and sending forth his ruach for every living thing.

It's a very powerful, beautiful view of reality. And your point in this conversation is to say, look at the juxtaposition between life and death. Yes, but that sending forth of the ruach is joined in parallel poetic lines with God taking away their ruach. It is a gift. That's right.

So clearly this poet also is reflecting not just on God's ideal for creation, but also the fact that we're outside of Eden, returning to the dust. He uses that phrase from Genesis 3. So this is a meditation on God's relationship to a world that is intimately connected with God to be alive, but also is estranged from God.

So in Genesis 2 and 3, you get this picture of humanity given the rock of God. and then in proximity to God being able to never have to give that up. In the garden, yeah, to eat from God's life. God would never have to take it back. You always get to have it. But it wouldn't be because humans inherently possess it of their nature.

Right. They receive it as a gift. And it's only then outside of that reality and that proximity to God in that state. That God says, well, you're going to return the dust. And so implicit in that is, I will take back my ruach. Yeah. Yeah. So really raises the question of a reading of the Eden story. Why would God take away his ruach? God's ruach is infinite and eternal. So presumably if he allowed it to remain in a creature, it would participate then in God's infinite life. And so here we're to the severe mercy that the exile from Eden represents, which is if God's spirit were to sustain the eternal existence of a creature that insists, on asserting its wisdom of discerning good and bad

over and against God's wisdom. In which case they find pain. Yeah. Then that would be hell, to live forever in that state. So the severe mercy of the exile from Eden is as if God's infinite rock is too much for the humans. It's too real. It's too permanent.

It's too permanent. And it's actually a mercy that humans, Women can only live and do so much damage to ourselves and other people before we have to go back to the dust. It's like a mercy on ourselves and those around us. Yeah, interesting. But it's a part of the crisis of the biblical story then is like, but aren't we made for that? For eternal life. Yeah.

We're capable of it. In other words, we've been made as a kind of creature that can receive it and participate in it and experience it. But yet, paradoxically, it's like too much for us. It goes to our heads. Right? And we take this gift of breath and we do all these horrible things like we've been doing throughout human history. And like the Hebrew Bible is constantly all these case studies and people abusing the gift of breath that God has given them. Did the goats get the E of the Tree of Life?

I don't know. You know what's interesting is the Tree of Life, as we talked about in our Tree of Life podcast series, was the common ancient Near Eastern icon symbol. and in most depictions of the tree of life down in Egypt or Mesopotamian art and literature, it's actually a pair of mountain goats. It's funny you say that. The icon is a pair of mountain goats

from the tree of life. Yeah, sweet, good for them. And I never would have thought about this until within this last year, my family and I got a dog. Yeah, people want to live with their dogs forever. And it's a regular conversation now with my boys about the gift of God that this little creature is to our family

and we would be sad to think of a future without Pippin. Yeah. Our little dog. All dogs good heaven. Yeah. So notice, this is a meditation

about animals. This paragraph we just read in Psalm 104. Look at how the Psalm ends. I will sing to Yahweh throughout my life. There's verse 33. I will sing praise to my God. while I remain alive. Notice the note of...

I'm not going to be alive forever. Relatively real. Yeah. So may my meditation be pleasing to him, I will be glad in Yahweh while I remain alive. So it just signals that note. Like what's true of the creatures is true of me. Yeah.

And I have this gift of Ruach. I don't know how long. It's not even mine. But the good that I do get to experience as a result of, of being alive, I just am going to thank God for that every day. But it's God's prerogative also to take away Maruart here outside of Eden as that severe mercy. And when God chooses to do that, I'll return to the dust. And that's it? That's game over?

Okay, okay, here we go. Let's conclude with Ecclesiastes. Okay. The author of Ecclesiastes is pretty, hmm, is a realist. Yeah. About going back to the dust. And really wants to probe the psychology and the feel of living outside of Eden. And the poet of Psalm 104 can, like, sing a song about it.

Yeah. I'll praise God as long as I remain alive. Poet of Eccleseasy is a little more like Job. As long as I have nefesh. I'm going to actually say something that bothers me. I'm going to complain? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to talk to the manager. Ecclesiasty chapter three, it's the most famous poem in Ecclesiastes. There's been songs made about it. There's a time for this and a time for that. There's an appointed time for everything under the skies. A time to give birth and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill. A time to heal.

A time to tear down. Time to build up. And so on. It goes to palm. here outside of Eden, things are not permanent, constant cycle of flux and change, and for every little Eden gift of birth

and planting and healing and building, there is its opposite. Death and uprooting and killing and tearing down. And humans, we can't seem to escape that cycle of opposites.

It's like we're trapped. Yeah. That's the reality of life under the sun. as he puts it in the book. So he comes to the end of that poem and just says, so let me ask you this. For all of the work and the toil that somebody does in this world,

what profit is there? Yeah. Everything you build is going to get torn down. Yeah. Your life is going to end. What is the point? Yeah. Yeah. So then he ratchets up a notch.

In verse 17 of chapter three, he says, okay, so I say to myself, here's something as an Israelite. confess is true. God is going to judge both the righteous man and the wicked man for a time in every matter and every deed. That's like classic. What does he mean by that? Oh, foundational beliefs of being an Israelite in the covenant. There is a God that my decisions matter. Because the poem might make you think, well, everything I build is going to get torn down. My life's going to be taken away.

Okay. Why do anything good? What profit is there? Yeah. Why do anything? Okay. And so here he's saying, well, God's watching, and he will make a judgment on good and bad. That's right. So he's holding together two things. From one point of view, I can't see from my limited, mortal, fragile existence the point of it all. I just don't know. And I can't control the outcomes of my life. God knows the point. But I have this confession. God will hold people accountable for their choices. And it does matter. It matters cosmically. And the author of Clesiastes is living in that paradox. There is meaning and purpose.

I confess that. But for the life of me, literally and metaphorically, I can't figure it out, and I won't be able to. It's actually beyond my ability. So it goes on to say, God is surely testing the sons of Adam

so that they can see that they are but animals. Whoa. Because the fate of the sons of Adam and the fate of the animals it's the same. Yeah. One dies, so does the other.

Indeed, they all have the same ruach. Yeah, we share that with the animals. Me and that hummingbird. There's no advantage for a human over an animal. Listen, this is Hevel. This is vapor. Everyone goes to the same place. Everyone comes from the dust.

Everyone goes back to the dust. And then this is probably the most, what do you say, risque. This is like the Job moment. in Ecclesiastes. Who even knows if the ruach of a human ascends upward and the ruach of an animal

descends downward to the earth? Who can actually prove that? What's he referring to? I know. So in Genesis 2, the ruach comes from God. But there's no talk about what happens to the rock.

Right, once you breathe it out, just the human goes to the difference. So this image of the ruach of a beast going down, but the ruach of a human going up. So he appears to be referring to some kind of idea. What's after death? What's after death and what happens to the ruach? So if the idea of a human ruach comes from God, Genesis 2,

Genesis 2 doesn't describe the origin of the life breath of the animals. It just says that God brought them up out of the ground. Yeah. That's what it says. So is it possible that the author of Ecclesiase is addressing this kind of popular conception that's like, you think even in death there's a difference between you and the animals, that maybe the human ruach is connected to God. So it goes back to God in the heavens. That we can exist beyond after. And then maybe that the animals exist in a different way. This line would make my sons really sad about our dog. But maybe that's where the difference is. But then it's the point is, yeah, who can prove that? You can't prove that. We don't know. We don't know. So even if you want to eat some guarantee of meaning, out of how humans are different

than animals in death, you can't really, you don't know. So it's so fascinating. I love that Ecclesiastes is in the Bible. Because he's saying from our experiential vantage point, we don't know. And that lack of knowledge is... Wow. And that's what makes the resurrection of Jesus such good news.

110%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's fast-forwarding in the story. Yeah. But I'm also trying to empathetically to have it, just ecclesiasties. I just see some people getting a little itchy.

Okay, that's good. But the vantage point of ecclesiastes, just trying to meditate on life outside of Eden under the sun. We just have no guarantees out here from one point of view. Yeah. And that's true, even for me, thousands of years later, as a follower of Jesus. Right.

The only hope that I trust in is in the resurrection and new creation of all things. Right. But I can't prove that with searching. Yeah. What I can point to is the testimony of the apostles, right? But over my own life and the outcomes of my life and my breath and what I want to build, zero guarantee. It's all fragile. So that's the main point I wanted to highlight.

It's in all these passages where breath and returning to dust comes up, breath is such an unmerited, undeserved, uncontrolled gift that it should humble me. Ruach is. Ruhach is. That it's as much a miracle of life as it is a sign of my mortality and death. Are we going to get into more about what happens to your spirit after you die? Will that be a conversation for later?

Yeah, we should. When we get into the prophets. And then in the New Testament, of course. But I also found there's merit in just sitting in these earlier parts of the Torah and prophets and Psalms and just letting these fundamental passages about spirit and breath and dust kind of sink in.

It makes the good news even more good. I guess is one way to put it. So ending with ecclesiastes is always a little risque. Yeah. What is the point? Yeah. So one of the surprises of Ruach in the Hebrew Bible

is that it's associated with life primarily, but second place award of most common associated ideas of God's spirit is wisdom. Hmm. That's related to wisdom. Yes. The spirit and life and the spirit and wisdom are all closely connected.

And so what I'm going to look at next is spirit and wisdom. And actually, I think we'll see how deeply connected it is to the stuff we've just talked about for the last couple episodes. Great. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project podcast. Next week, we'll look at how the... the spirit of God gives wisdom to humans. If you look in the hundreds of passages where Ruach appears in the Hebrew Bible, you will find many passages where God's wisdom is close by.

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