What Does Job 27:3 Mean in the King James?
All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils;
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse places two Hebrew breath-words together: your neshamah within you and God’s ruach in your nostrils, making divine presence as close as breathing.
THE MEANING
Your breath is in you now, and the verse locates God’s ruach at your nostrils, where breath is felt. It holds your living breath and God’s wind, breath, and spirit together in one bodily image.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The living breath is merely yours and separate from God’s presence. The verse places God’s ruach in the same nostrils where your breath is.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
Wind or moving air; breath and spirit.
Ruach names wind, breath, and spirit within a single Hebrew word. Beside neshamah, “my breath,” and located in the nostrils, it presents God’s presence with the immediacy of air moving through the body.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind or moving air.
רוּחַ
This sense keeps the word’s movement of air in view when the verse names God’s ruach in the nostrils.
ruach: Breath or spirit.
רוּחַ
The same word can name breath and spirit, bringing the divine presence close to the speaker’s bodily breathing.
נְשָׁמָה
neshamah
GROWS FROM
נשם
To breathe.
Neshamah names the breath that is in the speaker, while ruach names God’s presence at the nostrils. Their pairing brings the breath within the body and the divine ruach at its opening into one image.
ALSO GROWS
nasham: To breathe.
נָשַׁם
The verb returns the noun “breath” to the act of breathing that keeps the speaker alive.
neshamah: Breath; the breath of life.
נְשָׁמָה
This is the word Job uses for the breath within him, set beside God’s ruach.
THE PATTERN
Life is pictured as breath received from God and renewed through God’s living breath.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:THE THREAD
The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.Job 33:4 repeats the pairing of ruach and neshamah, joining the Spirit of God with the breath of the Almighty. The shared Hebrew words open Job 27:3 further: God’s ruach in the nostrils is part of the breath by which a person lives.
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