Psalm 104 · a question people ask
"You send out your Spirit and they are created" (104:30). Is this the Holy Spirit?
The WEB prints "your Spirit" (104:30), and the psalm doesn't say more. The Hebrew word is ruach (tap Spirit), which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "breath, wind, spirit", and the psalm has it four times: "He walks on the wings of the wind" (104:3), "He makes his messengers winds" (104:4), "You take away their breath; they die and return to the dust" (104:29), and "You send out your Spirit and they are created" (104:30). So in two verses side by side, their breath is taken away and your Spirit is sent out, and in Hebrew both are ruach. Another psalm has the word in the making of the heavens: "By the LORD’s word, the heavens were made: all their army by the breath of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6). Genesis 1's notes set out how Christians read God's ruach in Genesis 1:2, and one of the views there points to this verse (Genesis 1:2). These notes set the verses side by side and don't choose.
The verses
“He lays the beams of his rooms in the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He walks on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers winds, and his servants flames of fire.”
“You hide your face; they are troubled. You take away their breath; they die and return to the dust. You send out your Spirit and they are created. You renew the face of the ground.”
“By the LORD’s word, the heavens were made: all their army by the breath of his mouth.”
“The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.”