Ruah: The Breath that Gives Life
The Reverend Kay Dennis, Deacon
Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast
In Scripture, there is a Hebrew word that has no precise equivalent in English. It is ruah. At times, it is translated “wind.” Elsewhere, it is rendered “breath.” And still elsewhere, it means “Spirit.” The elasticity of the word is not a weakness but its strength. For in ruah we glimpse the mystery of God’s own presence moving in ways beyond our control, yet nearer to us than the air in our lungs.
The first time we encounter ruah is in Genesis 1. “The ruah of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Before the world took form, before light split the darkness, there was God’s ruah—an unseen, dynamic force, pregnant with creation. Already the story tells us: life is not self-generated. It is gift, breathed into being by the Spirit who cannot be pinned down.
Later in Genesis, the picture sharpens. The Lord God forms a human from the dust of the ground. The clay shape is lifeless until God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” What animates us, what makes us more than dust, is ruah. Our every inhale is borrowed. Our every exhale is testimony that we do not sustain ourselves.
This is a hard lesson for modern people. We flatter ourselves that we are self-made, powered by ingenuity, by grit, by sheer determination. But the pandemic years revealed the fragility of our breath. Ventilators, masks, the wrenching sound of labored breathing—all of it reminded us how utterly dependent we are on forces outside our control. Each moment of oxygen is grace.
Yet, ruah is not only life’s beginning. It is also God’s renewing presence in the middle of history. The prophet Ezekiel, standing in a valley filled with dry bones, hears God’s command: “Prophesy to the ruah.” And the breath comes from the four winds, filling the slain with life again. Israel, exiled and desolate, hears the staggering promise: “I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live.” It is a word not only for ancient Israel but for every community today gasping in despair, convinced there is no future.
For Christians, ruah comes to its fullness at Pentecost. The disciples, huddled in fear, are overwhelmed by “a sound like the rush of a mighty wind.” The Spirit fills them, scattering them outward, emboldened with words of life. Notice: the Spirit does not arrive as an inner spark of inspiration. The Spirit comes as a disruptive gale, shaking the walls, sending ordinary people into the streets with a mission.
In an anxious age—where breath is short, tempers are shorter and hope often seems in short supply—the witness of ruah is indispensable. It reminds us that the life of God cannot be contained by our limitations. The Spirit still hovers, still fills, still sends.
Every breath you take is not only biology. It is theology. It is ruah. And it is enough.