נִשְׁמָא
nish.ma
breath
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# נִשְׁמָא (nishmá): Breath in Biblical Hebrew The Hebrew word *nishmá* denotes breath in its most literal sense—the air inhaled and exhaled by living creatures. With 24 occurrences across the biblical text, this term represents a foundational concept for understanding how ancient Hebrew speakers conceptualized life itself. The word's consistent appearance suggests it held particular importance in theological and narrative contexts where the distinction between the living and the dead required explicit expression. The prevalence of this relatively uncommon word (appearing 24 times rather than through a more dominant synonym) indicates that biblical authors chose *nishmá* for specific rhetorical or theological purposes. Rather than being relegated to purely physiological description, the term likely carried weight in passages addressing mortality, divine animation of life, or the fragility of human existence. Its selective use across the biblical corpus suggests speakers understood breath as more than mere biological function—it was a marker of animation and presence. Without access to the full contextual data showing where these 24 occurrences appear, we can observe that the Hebrew Bible's deliberate deployment of this particular term for breath points to its significance in discussions of life, death, and the vital force that distinguishes the animate from the inanimate. The word represents a concrete, observable phenomenon—respiration—that served as a primary way ancients understood what made something alive.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
24 total occurrences across the text
By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of his anger are they consumed.
Job 26:4To whom have you uttered words? Whose spirit came out of you?
Job 27:3(for the length of my life is still in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils);
Job 32:8But there is a spirit in man, and the Spirit of the Almighty gives them understanding.
Job 33:4The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Job 34:14If he set his heart on himself, if he gathered to himself his spirit and his breath,
Job 37:10By the breath of God, ice is given, and the width of the waters is frozen.
Psalms 18:15Then the channels of waters appeared. The foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, Yahweh, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.
Psalms 150:6Let everything that has breath praise Yah! Praise Yah!
Proverbs 20:27The spirit of man is Yahweh’s lamp, searching all his innermost parts.
Isaiah 2:22Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for of what account is he?
Isaiah 30:33For his burning place has long been ready. Yes, for the king it is prepared. He has made its pyre deep and large with fire and much wood. Yahweh’s breath, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.
Isaiah 42:5God Yahweh, he who created the heavens and stretched them out, he who spread out the earth and that which comes out of it, he who gives breath to its people and spirit to those who walk in it, says:
Isaiah 57:16For I will not contend forever, neither will I always be angry; for the spirit would faint before me, and the souls whom I have made.
Daniel 10:17For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, immediately there remained no strength in me. There was no breath left in me.”
Genesis 2:7Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 7:22All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.
Deuteronomy 20:16But of the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes;
Joshua 10:40So Joshua struck all the land, the hill country, the South, the lowland, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no one remaining, but he utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded.
Joshua 11:11They struck all the souls who were in it with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them. There was no one left who breathed. He burned Hazor with fire.
Joshua 11:14The children of Israel took all the plunder of these cities, with the livestock, as plunder for themselves; but every man they struck with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them. They didn’t leave any who breathed.
2 Samuel 22:16Then the channels of the sea appeared. The foundations of the world were laid bare by Yahweh’s rebuke, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.
1 Kings 15:29As soon as he was king, he struck all the house of Jeroboam. He didn’t leave to Jeroboam any who breathed, until he had destroyed him; according to the saying of Yahweh, which he spoke by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite;
1 Kings 17:17After these things, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.