The name first appears in Genesis 1:2, usually mis-translated, or at least meaninglessly translated, as "the spirit of God" or "the spirit of Elohim", though there may be a connection to the Egyptian concepts of Ka and Ba, which are the physical and spiritual aspects of the divinity, whatever that might mean.
Whatever the Ru'ach Elohim may have been "in the beginning", it came to be equivalated with the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost referred to in Christianity. To the Jews this figure is usually called the "Shechinah" (שכינה), the "divine radiance", and is depicted as a bride, a queen, and most particularly as the Shabbat; ultimately this is the patriarchal reduction of the moon goddess, who was the consort and equal of the sun god, to the status of a mere housewife and occasional concubine.
RU'ACH comes froma root that means "to blow or breathe", both exhalation through the nostrils, as Elohim is said to have breathed life into Adam, and inhalation, in that Ru'ach can also mean "to smell", in its Hiphil (causative) form LEHARAYACH, which occurs frequently in relation to sacrifices, for it is the smell of the incense and the burning fat which serves to propitiate the god, and not the sacrifice itself. This is vital in the Kayin and Havel story, and in that of the Akeda (the non-sacrifice of Yitschak, in Genesis 22). When Elohim is angry, in the Bible, the idiom used is that his nostrils are inflamed - the incense from the sacrifice can be used as an antidote.
As a noun RU'ACH is feminine, though it can be used in the masculine. The word is also used for "the wind", usually only light breezes.
One of the four quarters of Heaven is called Ru'ach ha-Shamayim (רוח הַשָּׁמַיִם), regularly mistranslated as "the winds of Heaven". The explanation for this lies in the evolution of language. The word REVACH (רוח) is used in its most basic sense, in Genesis 32:17, to mean a physical "space", while Esther 4:14, a very late text, uses it to mean both a spiritual and a political "space", a relief from distress, and Job 32:20 ditto. The evolution is traceable too; 1 Samuel 16:23 for example, a very middle-period text, uses it for straightforward "relaxation". Several texts, from several periods, use it to mean the intellect (the brain in rational-objective mode), distinguishing it from the Nephesh (the spirit or soul which simply exists) and the LEV (the heart, which only thinks subjectively): Exodus 28:3, Job 20:3, Isaiah 29:24 et al.
So the literal becomes metaphorical, and like the Ka and Ba can be related to any aspect of life, from Nature to the human animus, and out of that sense of releasing stressed-up energy from the lungs with a deep sign comes the greater RU'ACH, the animus of the universe itself, which in the end is half of what the ancients really meant by "gods" - the other half being the force of life itself, which is ELOHIM.
How does RU'ACH then get to be a mathematical "quarter" of the heavens? It could be an error between RU'ACH (רוח) and REV'A (רבע), two words rather more similar in written than spoken Yehudit, and far closer than an accurate transliteration can render them, so please look at the Yehudit in brackets. Rev'a is a mathematical quarter, connected with Arb'a (ארבע), the number 4. Or it could simply be a more cosmological usage of the term "space" in the ancient reading of E as Elohim in the equation E=MC².
Ru'ach Elohim, as a specific term, means the spirit of Elohim, the Shechinah; Ru'ach Eloha, which has links with a former mother-goddess, usually means the "élan vital" or "human spirit". To the Beney Yisra-El the spirit was the seat of the senses and affections and emotions, while the heart controlled the non-ratiocinative thinking faculties (if we are honest, the same remains true today). This latter is immensely important, as most English translations use the English mythology of the heart in error, instead of our sense of the brain. Ru'ach Elohim controls the will, the intellect, thought and reasoning differently through the human heart and brain. From here to the Greco-Christian notion of Logos is not very far.
To the Phoenicians, as quoted by Philo, Creation took place when the Wind became enamoured of her own elements and embraced the primal chaos.
Copyright © 2020 David Prashker
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