A Pentecost Commentary from Taiwan 

Wind, Birds and the Spirit of God 

Taiwan Church News 2570 

By Elder Lin Ming-huei, Chou-Mei Presbyterian Church, Taipei, Taiwan 

Translation by David Alexander, Taiwan Church News 

In the first chapter of Genesis it is written, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep. While the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters" (NRSV). Where we read "the spirit of God" the original language can also be translated to read "God's great power" or "a wind which issued from God" and other such phrasing. The Hebrew language word "ruach" can be translated either "wind" or "spirit." More recent translations into English indicate that scholars are leaning more towards "wind". Compare the traditional Authorized (King James) version's "The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters" to the Today's English (Good News) version's "the power of God was moving over the water." 

The feelings of modern people when encountering new translations differ. English versions vary in translating the Hebrew either "wind" or "spirit". People are not always sure which to select. Ancient Hebrew people saw wind and spirit as the same thing. The action of the wind was the action of the spirit of God. In their conceptual world the wind was a miraculous thing. It came from the void, made noise and caused grass and trees to move, but people had no idea of its source. Warm Spring wind caused ice to melt and seemed responsible for the greening of grass and trees. Strong wind was able to destroy human beings, animals and houses, so it brought fear into human hearts. Such a powerful force was seen as the direct power and action of God. It was considered the work of the Holy Spirit. 

When Jesus talked with Nicodemus about being born of the Spirit he used the wind as an illustration, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes, so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8 NRSV). The pentecost story in Acts 2 also mixes wind and spirit, "a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2 NRSV). These New Testament examples show that even through the time of Jesus the Hebrews retained a belief in the relationship of wind and the spirit of God. 
Many forms that have come to us from ancient peoples also relate wind to birds. Birds, like the wind, live and move in the sky. They come and go free from contact to the ground. When birds flap their wings, the sound made is akin to that of the wind. Wing flapping even produces air movement. In ancient times the Holy Spirit was even depicted in the form of a bird. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. This description indicates the oneness of Jesus with the Holy Spirit. 

Because birds can fly upward into the sky ancient people endowed them with the power to act as mediums between earth and heaven. This can be seen in the many Western depictions of angels with birds' wings. 

Ancient Hebrews and ancient Chinese both put wind, birds and the spirit of God into one package. In China the wind was seen as divine and said to have come from the movement of the wings of "the divine bird". The name of the divine bird, the phoenix, in many Chinese languages is a homonym for wind. In ancient times the ideograph for phoenix was identical to that for wind. 
In China's ancient history, predating the Yen Emperor and the Yellow Emperor, the phoenix was the object of a folk religion faith. Wind was even the identity of one ethnic group. The Shang Dynasty was said to have been founded by a primal ancestor whose conception was accomplished by means of a swallow's visitation. 

The above chain of reasoning helps us to see how ancient people produced hypotheses in their quest for understanding. The ancients are connected across race and cultural lines. If we are to make sense of much of what we read in the Bible, a basic understanding of ancient Hebrew thought is essential.