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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 2:7 - 2:7
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“Then Jehovah God formed man from dust of the ground.” עָפָר is the accusative of the material employed (Ewald and Gesenius). The Vav consec. imperf. in Gen 2:7, Gen 2:8, Gen 2:9, does not indicate the order of time, or of thought; so that the meaning is not that God planted the garden in Eden after He had created Adam, nor that He caused the trees to grow after He had planted the garden and placed the man there. The latter is opposed to Gen 2:15; the former is utterly improbable. The process of man's creation is described minutely here, because it serves to explain his relation to God and to the surrounding world. He was formed from dust (not de limo terrae, from a clod of the earth, for עפר is not a solid mass, but the finest part of the material of the earth), and into his nostril a breath of life was breathed, by which he became an animated being. Hence the nature of man consists of a material substance and an immaterial principle of life. “The breath of life,” i.e., breath producing life, does not denote the spirit by which man is distinguished form the animals, or the soul of man from that of the beasts, but only the life-breath (vid., 1Ki 17:17). It is true, נְשָׁמָה generally signifies the human soul, but in Gen 7:22 חַיִּים נִשְׁמַת־רוּחַ is used of men and animals both; and should any one explain this, on the ground that the allusion is chiefly to men, and the animals are connected per zeugma, or should he press the ruach attached, and deduce from this the use of neshamah in relation to men and animals, there are several passages in which neshamah is synonymous with ruach (e.g., Isa 42:5; Job 32:8; Job 33:4), or חיים רוח applied to animals (Gen 6:17; Gen 7:15), or again neshamah used as equivalent to nephesh (e.g., (Jos 10:40, cf. Jos 10:28, Jos 10:30, Jos 10:32). For neshamah, the breathing, πνοή, is “the ruach in action” (Auberlen). Beside this, the man formed from the dust became, through the breathing of the “breath of life,” a חַיָּה נֶפֶשׁ, an animated, and as such a living being; an expression which is also applied to fishes, birds, and land animals (Gen 1:20-21, Gen 1:24, Gen 1:30), and there is no proof of pre-eminence on the part of man. As חַיָּה נֶפֶשׁ, ψυχὴ ζῶσα, does not refer to the soul merely, but to the whole man as an animated being, so נְשָׁמָה does not denote the spirit of man as distinguished from body and soul. On the relation of the soul to the spirit of man nothing can be gathered from this passage; the words, correctly interpreted, neither show that the soul is an emanation, an exhalation of the human spirit, nor that the soul was created before the spirit and merely received its life from the latter. The formation of man from dust and the breathing of the breath of life we must not understand in a mechanical sense, as if God first of all constructed a human figure from dust, and then, by breathing His breath of life into the clod of earth which he had shaped into the form of a man, made it into a living being. The words are to be understood θεοπρεπῶς. By an act of divine omnipotence man arose from the dust; and in the same moment in which the dust, by virtue of creative omnipotence, shaped itself into a human form, it was pervaded by the divine breath of life, and created a living being, so that we cannot say the body was earlier than the soul. The dust of the earth is merely the earthly substratum, which was formed by the breath of life from God into an animated, living, self-existent being. When it is said, “God breathed into his nostril the breath of life,” it is evident that this description merely gives prominence to the peculiar sign of life, viz., breathing; since it is obvious, that what God breathed into man could not be the air which man breathes; for it is not that which breathes, but simply that which is breathed. Consequently, breathing into the nostril can only mean, that “God, through His own breath, produced and combined with the bodily form that principle of life, which was the origin of all human life, and which constantly manifests its existence in the breath inhaled and exhaled through the nose” (Delitzsch, Psychol. p. 62). Breathing, however, is common to both man and beast; so that this cannot be the sensuous analogon of the supersensuous spiritual life, but simply the principle of the physical life of the soul. Nevertheless the vital principle in man is different from that in the animal, and the human soul from the soul of the beast. This difference is indicated by the way in which man received the breath of life from God, and so became a living soul. “The beasts arose at the creative word of God, and no communication of the spirit is mentioned even in Gen 2:19; the origin of their soul was coincident with that of their corporeality, and their life was merely the individualization of the universal life, with which all matter was filled in the beginning by the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, the human spirit is not a mere individualization of the divine breath which breathed upon the material of the world, or of the universal spirit of nature; nor is his body merely a production of the earth when stimulated by the creative word of God. The earth does not bring forth his body, but God Himself puts His hand to the work and forms him; nor does the life already imparted to the world by the Spirit of God individualize itself in him, but God breathes directly into the nostrils of the one man, in the whole fulness of His personality, the breath of life, that in a manner corresponding to the personality of God he may become a living soul” (Delitzsch). This was the foundation of the pre-eminence of man, of his likeness to God and his immortality; for by this he was formed into a personal being, whose immaterial part was not merely soul, but a soul breathed entirely by God, since spirit and soul were created together through the inspiration of God. As the spiritual nature of man is described simply by the act of breathing, which is discernible by the senses, so the name which God gives him (Gen 5:2) is founded upon the earthly side of his being: Adam, from אדמה (adamah), earth, the earthly element, like homo from humus, or from χαμά, χαμαί, χαμᾶθεν, to guard him from self-exaltation, not from the red colour of his body, since this is not a distinctive characteristic of man, but common to him and to many other creatures. The name man (Mensch), on the other hand, from the Sanskrit mânuscha, manuschja, from man to think, manas = mens, expresses the spiritual inwardness of our nature.