(Holy Spirit, pnenma). Hebrew word meaning “spirit” (Greek pneuma). We have studied in other entries the basic meaning of spirit and pneuma. Now we collect some distinctive aspects of the experience of the spirit in the Hebrew Bible, based on the word ruah. (1) Comparison. Greeks and Israelites. The Hebrew culture is not very far from the Greek, as the meaning and evolution of this word shows. Ruah can be translated as “wind, spirit”, and it is very close to the Greek pneuma: it is the original and mysterious wind, unpredictable, omnipresent; it is the air, founding reality, divine and numinous, in which everything that exists is based. It is the smoke of a fire, expression of the great fire that destroys everything; but it is, at the same time, the breath where everything is born and receives its meaning. In this context, we must remember that, contrary to other peoples, Israel has not tended to deify the wind as isolated, turning it into a god along with others, within a pantheon of cosmic gods. On the contrary, Israel has started from an almost divine conception of the wind and has progressively de-divinized it, until it became God’s agent or symbol of his presence and action among men. In this context a significant parallel can be drawn: the Greeks demystify the spirit, to conceive it as a cosmic reality or to put it under the power of thought (of the rational nolis, which knows everything, because it has a divine root); the Hebrews demystify it by making it an expression of the presence of a personal God who dialogues with men. “It is likely that, due to what can be called a primitive mentality, ancient Israel has known in its historical-geographical context the divinization of various natural forces: everything that has great power is numinous and reveals the presence of a soul. One could, therefore, speak very well of spirits of the desert, of the sea, of the storm, etc. It is not excluded that remnants of the so-called animist world view can be found in the literature of Israel. But, significantly, these demons (spirits of the desert, etc.) are never known by the term ruah. The ruah designates, rather, a force of nature, and is expressed by its very name: it is the wind… It is unlikely that the Hebrews started from a material and almost scientific aspect of the wind to later spiritualize it. Against this, we must recognize that the wind was a very appropriate element to be spiritually divinized in the primitive mentality. Everything allows us to suppose that the term ruah had spiritual resonances… because, in its very sense of wind, it already had a spiritual meaning. It can be thought that if this term has had an extraordinary deployment, it has not been because of its objective notes (such as physical wind), but because of its divine character…” (D. Lys, 337).
(2) Ruah, the action of God. It does not begin as a physical term, quite objective and precise, which later becomes a sign of Yahweh’s action, but rather is from the beginning something mysterious, spiritual and material at the same time, cosmic and divine; in that sense, it can be presented as an expression of the deepest unity that links God and the world. Perhaps we could speak of a sacred totality, of an encompassing space-time that surrounds and links God and men, along the same lines as Greece where the pnetuna can evoke the divine totality in which we are immersed. But through a process of historical recognition and dialogue with God, the ruah has become dualized, appearing on the one hand as a created reality (pure wind, cosmic air) and on the other as a symbol of Yahweh’s acting presence. In this second aspect, one can even speak of a personification of the ruah, as we already see in 1 Kgs 22:20-22, where Yahweh converses with the “army of heaven”, that is, with the divine court of his angels- spirits to whom he asks advice on how to destroy Ahab, the Israelite king. “Then the Ruah came forward, stood before Yahweh and said, ‘I will deceive him.’ Yahweh asked him: “In what way?”. He replied, “I will go and make myself a false ruah in the mouth of all his prophets.” Yahweh said: “You will manage to deceive him. Go and do so”” (1 Kgs 22:20-22). The ruah is here personified in a masculine way (in general, the term is usually feminine, with a rather impersonal meaning). This Ruah, who appears here as an independent being, who dialogues with God (as a great Angel of his court), represents the same action of God that can be presented as a destructive force for the wicked. We are facing a sacrodemonic vision of God, which can present itself as a force of deception and destruction for the wicked, at the beginning of a line that leads to the discernment of spirits, to the separation of sacred, positive and perverse powers (dualism*). In this case, God uses his evil spirit to destroy the wicked. This discernment of spirits places us before the enigma of the ambivalence of the ruah, which will later be linked to good and bad spirits, gods and devils, angels and demons. In the reflections that follow we will highlight the positive aspect of the ruah. (3) Notes of the ruah. It is almost always ambivalent: it indicates, on the one hand, a phenomenon of the cosmos (such as the wind that God sent, according to Ex 14,21, to separate the waters of the Sea from the Reeds); but, at the same time, it expresses something that is proper to God, as in 2 Sam 22:16, where it is said that it was the very breath of God (the breath of his nostrils) that dried up the waters of the sea. Possibly, both languages are complementary. Wind and breath appear on the one hand as the work of a transcendent God and on the other as his concrete presence in the world. There is only one God who is transcendent (he is not identified with anything that we can represent or think about, he cannot be fixed on statues or signs of the cosmos); but, at the same time, this God acts in a powerful, creative way, so that the wind of the world (and the breath of man) are conceived as a moment of his action, being able to become a symbol of the saving presence of God. the. The Bible knows that the breath of man is the presence of the ruah of God (cf. Gn 2,7), so that all men have ruah, in a way that we can call ordinary. But there are some who have it or receive it in an extraordinary way, so that they can perform great works. The man to whom God grants the ruah is enabled to carry out undertakings impossible for others: the man of ruah can interpret dreams (Gn 41,38) and predict future things (cf. Nm 24,2), winning in war ( charismatic prophets*); but, above all, the man of ruah can dialogue with God, in whose presence he lives. From this base we can evoke three basic features of the presence and action of the Spirit, as a creative, saving and eschatological force.
(4) Creative force. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was something chaotic and empty, but the ruah of God fluttered on the surface of the waters (Gn 1,1-2). Without the direct breath of God, the reality of the world is chaos. Without his ruah man dies: he loses his breath, his life is exhausted and he becomes a corpse. Only the breath of God offers life and order to the underlying chaos of things. Here we are not only speaking of a first action of God who by his will and word has raised up the world forever, in the beginning, but of a permanent action and presence of God. The world itself lacks order, background or consistency. It exists, and it is different from God; but it cannot maintain or achieve meaning on its own. But the ruah of God is present and makes the world become a place and habitation, path and life for man. In a sense, reality exists and is distinct from God; but in its deepest truth, it only acquires being and exists by the breath of God that sustains it. The task of the breath of God in Gn 1,2 is, above all, of a life-giving character: it miraculously and freely makes life exist. We must specify that this life is not limited to the animation of superior and inferior living beings (animals and plants), but rather that it is present in everything that exists, as opposed to nothing and death. The ruah is a creative presence: it is the very reality of God as close and active (cf. Gn 2,7). Using modern terminology, we could say that the very reality of the world (nature) is supported and sustained by grace (the life-giving presence of God). We do not speak thus of God in himself; nor does man (the world) exist by himself. There is (from us) a God for the world (God who sustains the world with his ruah); and there is a world in God (founded on the divine ruah). God is known by his ruah (his deed of him) of him; the world exists only insofar as it is grounded in that divine action.
(5) Saving force. Let us remember the classic texts: “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh blew a mighty ruah from the east all night, which dried up the sea and divided the waters” (Ex 14:21). “The bottom of the sea was exposed, the foundations of the world disappeared, before Yahweh’s rebuke, when the ruah breathed in his nostrils” (2 Sm 22,16). The creative ruah becomes a saving force. That action of God that gave life and reality to the world is now presented as a power that liberates, opening a path of salvation for men. The Old Testament ignores the division of some natural facts (creation) and others supernatural (salvation): everything is natural, it is the presence of God, the action of his ruah on the world, and everything is, at the same time, supernatural, since man and the world are based on something bigger than themselves. Israel’s reflection has perceived the strength of God’s creative and saving ruah as linked in a special way to the emergence of the people in the time of the Judges. When it seems that Israel is lost, when it suffers dominated by the enemy forces of this world, God drives by his ruah some men (judges*) who stand out in war and who free their own from the enslaving hand of other peoples (cf. Je 3,10; 6,34; 11,29; 1 Sam 11,6; etc.). The ruah of God unfolds in the path of men, and encourages it, promotes it, sustains it. In this way, the Israelites have surpassed the level of the oppressive slavery of nature that, even being sustained by the ruah of God, submits men to its eternally equal rhythms. They have freed themselves from nature, to enter the field of history where the ruah of Yahweh directs man towards a future enriched by the hope of God himself who comes. (6) Eschatological force. Israel has felt that the present is full of oppression, slavery, sin and disappointment. But the ruah of God is powerful. His action must stir up something that is new. As an expression of his creative force, the messianic king will emerge. “A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse, and a shoot will sprout from his roots. He will rest on…