THE BREATH OF LIFE

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 13, 1868

THE BREATH OF LIFE.

The Methodist minister, in a discourse last Sunday, stated that in the passage, “He breathed into him the breath of life,” instead of the singular, life, the Hebrew is in the plural, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives. Is this so? J. PHILO.

Stanton, Montcalm Co., Mich.

ANSWER.

Such is said to be the meaning of the Hebrew. To English readers commentators give the expression thus: “Nishmath hayim, the breath of lives.” And granted that this is so, what follows? The purpose for which commentators dwell upon this peculiar expression is very apparent. They wish it to appear that man is endowed with a double life; life of the body and life of the soul, or temporal life and eternal life. We reply that if this proves immortality for man, it proves the same for the lower orders of animals. In Gen. vii, 22, a still stronger expression is used and applied to beasts and creeping things: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, . . . . all in whose nostrils was the breath of life.” This expression Jacobus translates thus: “All which had the breath of the spirit of lives in their nostrils.” And he gives the Hebrew as follows: “Nishmath ruah hayim.” Here we have the nishmath hayim of chapter ii, 7, all that is expressed there, and ruah in addition. And since the expression is thus applied to all the animals that move upon the earth, it is spoiled for the use which divines endeavor to make of it in favor of man.

We believe it will be found true that every argument to prove the immortality of man drawn from the record of his creation, will prove the same for all breathing animals. Not that man is in no respect above the lower orders of animals; he is vastly superior to them in his organization and powers of mind; but none of the terms used to describe his formation, or to enumerate his endowments, are sufficient to prove him immortal.