Genesis 2:7

Hebrew Bible

5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)

Job 4:9

Hebrew Bible

7 Call to mind now: Who, being innocent, ever perished? And where were upright people ever destroyed? 8 Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same. 9 By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. 10 There is the roaring of the lion and the growling of the young lion, but the teeth of the young lions are broken. 11 The mighty lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

 Notes and References

"... Job 4:9 belongs to known textual traditions that adopt the expression ‘breath of God’ as an instrument of destruction. Of course, here we have to reckon with the possibility that the authors of Job 4:9 could also have had the other texts of the Hebrew Bible that use this expression in view. On the other hand, the following few observations may indicate that the authors of Job 4:9 deliberately employed - although with entirely different meaning - the widely used motif of God’s breath as a life-giving entity ... Significantly, this creation background is in view even in the texts where these terms are used to report God’s destructive power (Psalm 18:16; Isaiah 40:7; Hosea 13:15). It is noteworthy that Job 33:4 clearly relates the breath of God to human life as it shows the authors were probably aware of the narrative of the creation of man as presented in Genesis 2:7. The difficulty with this argument is that the speeches of Elihu (Job 32–37) are a later addition to the dialogue section of the book of Job, and therefore they cannot be accepted as evidence to support the case for the connection between Job 4:9 and Genesis 2:7. Helpful in this regard is that Job 33.4 is not the only instance in the book in which the breath of God is depicted in this manner: another example, i.e., Job 27:3, explicitly recalls the creation imagery similar to that represented in Genesis 2:7. These references strongly suggest that the authors of the book of Job were aware of the notion of God’s breath as a life-giving instrument ..."

Saleem, Yasir ‘For a Man Is Born to Suffer’: Intertextuality between Job 4–5 and Gen. 2.4b–3.24 (pp. 388-407) Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2022

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