What Does Genesis 7:15 Mean?
And they came in to Noah, into the ark, two and two of all flesh, in which is the breath of life.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.THE KEY
The ark’s passengers are counted by kind, but their life is unified by the same ruach, the breath moving in every body.
THE MEANING
Every creature entering the ark carries the breath of life. The verse places all flesh within one shared, embodied reality: life is present in each breathing creature. Their kinds differ, but each carries this living breath.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that breath marks only human life: the verse names all flesh as carrying the breath of life.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
ruach
To breathe or blow; moving air, and by extension room or relief.
“breath of life” in this verse is ruach. English can make “breath” sound like a mere bodily detail, but ruach names moving air within and around the living. The related רְוָחָה (revachah, relief or room) extends the root’s reach from moving air to spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath or wind.
רוּחַ
The same word names the air moving around a creature and the breath it carries within.
revachah: Relief, respite, or room.
רְוָחָה
This related form links the root of breath and wind with the idea of room or relief.
חַיִּים
chayim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ch-y-h
To live or remain alive.
“breath of life” in this verse is chayim. The root names both being alive and the living creature itself. Here, life is not detached from flesh: it is what makes each kind of flesh a living body.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living or alive.
חַי
This adjective names the living state carried by the creatures entering the ark.
chayyah: A living creature or animal.
חַיָּה
This noun shows the same root naming a living being, not just an abstract idea of life.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly joins breath with the making, sustaining, and quickening of life.
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The breath of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty keeps me alive.It is the breath that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are breath, and they are life.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.Genesis 2:7 speaks of נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים (nishmat chayim, breath of life) and says the human becomes נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah, a living soul). The shared חיה (ch-y-h, to live) root carries that life from the first human to all the flesh entering the ark.
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