Maynard Wright is a good friend of many years.  He and I often have significant discussions about the issue of creation care and the coming Kingdom.  Not too long ago he was sharing his thoughts on the issue of the spirits or souls of animals, and I asked him to write out his thoughts for me.  What follows are his views on the matter I brought up a few posts back.

The “Spirit” Of An Animal

The future of a human being following physical death is covered quite clearly by the Bible. There is much less about the death of an animal. There are some passages, however, that indicate that the spirit of an animal returns to the presence of God in heaven following the death of the animal. In listing passages of Scripture below, there has been no attempt to be exhaustive but merely to include enough information to demonstrate the general usage of a term. Both Greek and Hebrew words are transliterated into English without vowel points, accent marks, breathing marks or iota subscripts so that this note may be represented in ASCII text. “Unger’s Bible Dictionary” [1] points out that “soul” and “spirit” are sometimes used interchangeably in the Bible and are sometimes not so used. This investigation makes no technical distinction but attempts to determine the right application by the usage of the term elsewhere in Scripture.

The Hebrew term “ruwach” means “wind,” or by resemblance, “breath,” according to Strong’s Hebrew dictionary entry 7307 [2]. The term is said to be applied to the spirit of a rational being. The word is used to describe the spirit of man in Judges 15:19 and I Chronicles 5:26. It describes the Spirit of the Lord in Genesis 1:2, II Samuel 23:2, II Chronicles 15:1, Isaiah 48:16 and Ezekiel 11:5. It sometimes describes an evil spirit sent by God to accomplish some purpose as in Judges 9:23 and I Samuel 16:23. The word ruwach is used to describe the spirits of
the living beings that are in the presence of God in Ezekiel 1:20-21 and the spirits of the cherubim (the same beings) in Ezekiel 10:17. In Psalm 146:4, ruwach is used of a human being in a manner quite similar to that applied to animals in Psalm 104. In I Kings 22 and II Chronicles 18, God sends a “lying spirit” to deceive the prophets of Ahab. The spirit is one of the “host of heaven” who are in the presence of God. The word ruwach is used here to describe the “lying spirit.” This passage, combined with the general usage of ruwach discussed above, indicates that God has a vast “reservoir” of spirits in heaven and that He equips and directs them differently as is required to carry out different tasks.

Psalm 104:29, speaking of animals, states “… Thou dost take away their spirit, they expire” (NASB [3]). The AV [4] has “breath” instead of “spirit,” but both are from ruwach. “Takest” in the AV (“take” in the NASB) is from “acaph” (Strong’s Hebrew word 622). Comparisons are difficult because acaph is used nowhere else in Scripture, but its principal meaning is “to gather for any purpose; hence to receive, take away.” The word “die” (“expire” in the NASB) which is applied to animals in this passage is “gava” (Strong’s Hebrew word 1478) which means “to breath out, i.e. (by implication) to expire; – die, be dead, give up the ghost, perish.” In the New Testament, Revelation 16:3 reads (AV) “And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living soul died in the sea.” The NASB has “And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man; and every living thing in the sea died.” The word “soul” here is “psuche” (Strong’s Greek word 5590). Strong indicates that the term applies to the “animal sentient principle only,” but the usage in the New Testament, especially in Matthew 10:28, Matthew 16:26, Hebrews 10:39, James 1:21, James 5:20, I Peter 1:9, and Revelation 6:9 clearly refers to an immortal component of the being involved. Revelation 6:9 uses the term to describe those “souls who had been slain because of the Word of God” and who are now in heaven. Arndt and Gingrich [5] state “It is often impossible to draw hard and fast lines between the meanings of this many-sided word.” One of the several meanings they assign to psuche is “(breath of) life, life-principle, soul, of animals.”

There are also descriptions in Scripture of animals that have their origins in heaven (II Kings 2:11, Revelation 6:2, 4 and 8). It isn’t made clear, however, how these relate to animals living on the earth. Presumably, the spirits of these heavenly animals are “obtained” from the spirits available to God for the purpose just as angels in Scripture assume different forms and tasks from time to time.

It is my opinion that the spirit of an animal born on earth is drawn from God’s “reservoir” of spirits in heaven and that the spirit returns to God when the physical body of the animal dies.

References:
[1] Merrill F. Unger, “Unger’s Bible Dictionary,” Third Edition,
Moody Bible Institute, 1969
[2] James Strong, S.T.D., L.L.D., “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance
of the Bible,” Abingdon, Nashville, 1890
[3] New American Standard Bible, Lockman Foundation, 1977 revision
[4] Authorized Version of the Bible (AV, KJV), British Crown
Copyright, revision of 1769
[5] William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, “A Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian
Literature,” Second Edition, The University of Chicago Press,
1979

Maynard Wright

See you outdoors!

Dean