The Breath of Life

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

THE BREATH OF LIFE

Gen 2:4-7

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens —  5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground —  7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

NIV

We cannot tell for certain, but from all this account of what the earth, or ground, or land was like before any rain, we must only ponder what the face of the earth was like.  Because there was only a mist, which is a more accurate translation of the Hebrew, there would have been no soil erosion from the mountains. We are not told if there were rivers, raging waters, like the Colorado, that would have eroded the Grand Canyon, or if God formed it just for his own pleasure, just as when he formed the great peaks of the Himalayas. But now he formed man. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for man is 'adam, which is also the name of the first man, Adam.  Because God formed man from the dust of the earth, what makes it so wonderful is that the Hebrew word for dust, or ground, is 'adamah, which then makes 'adam a form of 'adamah. This brings to mind what Solomon wrote about the fact that we were made from the dust and will return to dust, it is the cycle of life, that we are no different or have any advantage over the animals, that all with the breath of life experience the same end. However, God has another thought regarding what will happen to the man he formed from the ground. Because he formed us in his own image, we are different from all other living things. We are the only creation of God that is aware of itself, or sentient. We might want to make certain species of the animal kingdom aware of themselves, but they all function on the instincts God instilled in them. Man is the only one who was formed from the dust of the ground into their own image. We can see that as a triune form, Spirit, soul, and body, or we can see that as we are the only ones who are sentient, aware of how we were formed by the hand of God and how he breathed his breath into our nostrils, giving us life. This means every breath we take is the breath of God. Some have said that the sound of our inhales and exhales is the word, Yahweh. Whatever it sounds like, we know without a doubt that God breathed life into us.