# What Does Wind Symbolize in the Bible? God’s Spirit, His Power and What Passes Away

Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/what-does-wind-symbolize-in-the-bible/
Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/)
Published: 2024-05-24
Updated: 2026-10-20

In the Bible, wind points above all to the Spirit and breath of God. The Hebrew *ruach* and the Greek *pneuma* each mean wind, breath and spirit. Wind also shows God's power over the sea and the weather, and it stands for whatever is empty and soon gone. Which of these a verse means, its context shows.

Scripture never makes the wind itself divine. When the LORD passed by Elijah at Horeb, "a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind" (1 Kings 19:11). He was not in the earthquake or the fire either, and after them came "a still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12). God is not the wind. He is the one the wind obeys. [Fire in the Bible](https://christianpure.com/learn/fire-in-the-bible/) works the same way: God may come with it, and he is never the same thing as it.

## Why do wind, breath and spirit share one word in the Bible?

Because the Hebrew of the Old Testament has one word for all three. *Ruach* means "breath, wind, spirit", in the words of the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (1906), which counts 117 places where it means wind. The same word names a person's breath and temper, and the Spirit of God. So a translator has to choose an English word each time, and sometimes the choice is hard.

You can watch them choose in the Bible's second verse. The King James Version reads, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2), and the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 version has "the spirit of God hovered". The New Revised Standard Version reads "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters", and the Catholic New American Bible "a mighty wind sweeping over the waters". All four are translating the same two words, *ruach elohim*. Psalm 104 shows the same overlap. Where the KJV says God "maketh his angels spirits" (Psalm 104:4), the New American Standard Bible, the NRSV and the 1917 Jewish version all read "winds": "He makes the winds His messengers".

The Greek of the New Testament works the same way. Thayer's lexicon defines *pneuma* first as "a movement of air", then as breath, then as spirit, and gives John 3:8 as a verse where it means "the wind itself". Greek also has a plain word for wind, *anemos*, used for the storms on the Sea of Galilee and the winds that "beat upon that house" in Jesus' parable (Matthew 7:25). But in John 3:8, where Jesus speaks of the Spirit, the Gospel uses the word that can mean both.

## Why is wind a picture of the Holy Spirit?

Because Scripture uses one word for the wind and for the Spirit, and then shows the Spirit doing what wind and breath do: moving unseen and giving life. Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones and was told to say to the wind, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live". He obeyed, "and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army" (Ezekiel 37:9–10). In Ezekiel's Hebrew, the "wind" and the "breath" of these verses are the same word.

Jesus used the picture with Nicodemus, who had asked, "How can a man be born when he is old?" (John 3:4). "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). In Greek the verse opens with *pneuma* for the wind and closes with the same word for the Spirit. John Chrysostom, preaching on the verse, put Jesus' point plainly: "If, says He, you know not how to explain the motion nor the path of this wind which you perceive by hearing and touch, why are you over-anxious about the working of the Divine Spirit…" No one can see the wind or steer it, yet anyone standing in it knows it is there.

After his resurrection Jesus made the picture an act. "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20:22). The breath recalls the first man: God "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). In both languages the word for spirit begins as breath, and Jesus' gesture, as Thayer puts it, has "in view the primary meaning of the words".

At Pentecost the disciples heard a sound like wind before they saw anything. "Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2). Then came tongues "like as of fire", and then the result: "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:3–4). Luke's Greek word for the wind here is *pnoē*, the word the Greek Old Testament used for "the breath of life" in Genesis 2:7. Wind is one of several pictures Scripture gives of the Spirit, beside fire, the dove and oil; what Christians teach about the Spirit himself is set out in [who the Holy Spirit is](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-mysteries-who-is-the-holy-spirit/).

## How does wind show God's power?

The Psalms praise God as the one who "bringeth the wind out of his treasuries" (Psalm 135:7) and "walketh upon the wings of the wind" (Psalm 104:3). The stories show him using it. After the flood, "God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged" (Genesis 8:1). At the Red Sea "the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided" (Exodus 14:21). When God finally answered Job's questions, "the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind" (Job 38:1).

The Gospels give Jesus the same authority. On the Sea of Galilee "there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship", while Jesus slept. Woken by his frightened disciples, "he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:37–39). The disciples asked, "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41). In Israel's Scriptures it is God who commands the wind. Mark lets us draw the conclusion ourselves.

## What do the east, west, north and south winds mean in the Bible?

Each direction brought its own weather to the land of Israel, and the Bible's writers used that weather as they knew it. As the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) sums it up, the west wind is the most common and brings rain from the sea, the south wind is warm, the north wind is cool, and the east wind blows hot from the desert.

| Wind | What it brings | Where to read it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| East wind | Desert heat; withers crops, brings locusts, wrecks ships | Genesis 41:6; Exodus 10:13; Psalm 48:7; Jonah 4:8 |
| North wind | Cold; clears the rain, in the KJV | Job 37:9; Proverbs 25:23 |
| South wind | Heat, and calm weather | Luke 12:55; Job 37:17; Acts 27:13 |
| West wind | Carried the locusts away; rain came from the west | Exodus 10:19; Luke 12:54 |
| Euroclydon | The storm that wrecked Paul's ship | Acts 27:14 |

### The east wind

The Hebrew word for the east wind is *qadim*, which also means simply the east. It is the hot wind often called the sirocco, "often as violent and scorching, from desert on southeast", as the old lexicon describes it. It dries crops: Pharaoh dreamed of "seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind" (Genesis 41:6), and Ezekiel asks of a vine, "shall it not utterly wither, when the east wind toucheth it?" (Ezekiel 17:10). It carried the plague of locusts: "when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts" (Exodus 10:13). It beat on Jonah until "he fainted" (Jonah 4:8), and it breaks ships: "Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind" (Psalm 48:7). So the east wind usually signals judgment, yet the same wind opened the Red Sea for Israel (Exodus 14:21). What it means depends on whom God sends it against and whom he sends it for.

### The north wind

"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north" (Job 37:9). One proverb about the north wind reads differently from Bible to Bible, and scholars have argued over it. The KJV's text has "The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue" (Proverbs 25:23). Its own margin offers "bringeth forth rain", which the English Revised Version put in the text and which modern versions such as the ESV and NASB follow. The KJV's text, as the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges points out, "follows the Vulg.", Jerome's Latin. Ellicott's commentary thought "the marginal rendering is probably more correct", while the 1915 encyclopedia took the KJV's side on the weather: the north wind drives away rain, "as correctly stated in Proverbs 25:23". Either way the proverb is about the harm a sly tongue does, but the two readings turn it around. In the KJV's text an angry look drives off the slanderer as the north wind drives off rain; in the margin's reading a slanderer's tongue brings angry looks as surely as the north wind brings rain.

### The south wind

Jesus used the south wind to make a point about reading signs: "when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass" (Luke 12:55). The book of Job speaks of the stillness that comes "when he quieteth the earth by the south wind" (Job 37:17). A gentle south wind drew Paul's ship out to sea: "when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete" (Acts 27:13). In the Song of Songs the two winds are welcome together: "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out" (Song of Solomon 4:16).

### The west wind and Euroclydon

In Exodus 10:19 the Hebrew calls the west wind the "sea wind", because the Mediterranean lies west of Israel. It ended a plague: "the LORD turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea" (Exodus 10:19). Rain came from the same quarter, as Jesus said: "When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is" (Luke 12:54). Euroclydon, in Acts, is the storm that followed the soft south wind: "not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon" (Acts 27:14). It was an east-northeast wind, the encyclopedia explains, "especially dangerous in that region". The ship was lost, and yet "they escaped all safe to land" (Acts 27:44).

## What are the four winds in the Bible?

The four winds are the four directions, and together they mean the whole earth. Ezekiel called the breath "from the four winds" (Ezekiel 37:9). In Daniel's vision, "behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea" (Daniel 7:2). Jesus said the Son of man "shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Matthew 24:31). John saw "four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree" (Revelation 7:1).

The phrase means "the four principal or cardinal winds", as Thayer explains it, and so "the four quarters of the heavens". The Hebrew *ruach* can even mean a side of a building: Ezekiel measures the temple's east, north, south and west sides with the same word. Scripture gives no list of four kinds of spiritual wind. Wherever the four winds appear, they are the points of the compass, standing for everywhere.

## Why does wind stand for what is empty and passing?

Wind cannot be held or kept, and Scripture uses it for a life that is short and for effort that comes to nothing. Job prays, "O remember that my life is wind" (Job 7:7). A psalm says of each person, "his days are as grass", and then, "the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more" (Psalm 103:15–16). The first psalm compares the ungodly to "the chaff which the wind driveth away" (Psalm 1:4).

Ecclesiastes repeats the image as a refrain. The KJV renders it "all is vanity and vexation of spirit" (Ecclesiastes 1:14), but the Hebrew phrase, in the lexicon's rendering, is "striving for wind": chasing what cannot be caught. Hosea warns Israel, "they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7). Proverbs says of the man who brings trouble on his family, he "shall inherit the wind" (Proverbs 11:29).

Jeremiah 2:24 uses wind differently. Its wild ass "snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure", a picture of Israel running after the Baals (Jeremiah 2:23). The wind is only what the animal sniffs; the point of the image is her craving: "who can turn her away?"

The New Testament uses wind for a faith that will not stay put. Paul wants believers no longer "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14), and James compares the person who prays while doubting to "a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed" (James 1:6). Augustine read the wind that breaks the ships of Tarshish (Psalm 48:7) in his own way; his Latin psalm calls it a strong wind. The ships, he wrote, mean "the pride of the nations", and the strong wind is "very strong fear" of Christ the judge. He tied the verse to Paul's warning about every wind of doctrine: "Now let none presume on full sails, and on the seeming fair state of this life, as of the sea."

## Does dreaming of strong wind mean something in the Bible?

The Bible gives dreams of strong wind no general meaning. It does tell of dreams with wind in them, and each is explained for the one who dreamed it. Pharaoh saw "seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind" (Genesis 41:6), and Joseph explained them as "seven years of famine" (Genesis 41:27). Nebuchadnezzar "dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled" (Daniel 2:1). In one of them a great image broke in pieces, "and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them" (Daniel 2:35), and Daniel explained that God would set up a kingdom that would "break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms" (Daniel 2:44). Daniel himself "had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed" (Daniel 7:1), in which "the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea" (Daniel 7:2) and "four great beasts came up from the sea" (Daniel 7:3). That dream, too, is explained: "These great beasts, which are four, are four kings" (Daniel 7:17).

Each of these meanings belongs to one dream, and Scripture offers none of them as a key for anyone else's. This is the same answer the Bible gives for most dream images, from storms to [dreams about dead animals](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-dreams-dead-animals/).

What Jesus said about strong wind comes with a condition. He told of a house that stood when "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock" (Matthew 7:25). He also said whose house it is: "whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them" (Matthew 7:24). The house of the one who hears and does not do them fell in the same storm, "and great was the fall of it" (Matthew 7:26–27). On the lake, the storm itself ended at his word: "Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39).

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## Related reading

- [What Does the Dove Represent in the Bible? The Holy Spirit Dove and the Christian Dove](https://christianpure.com/learn/dove-symbolism-christianity/)
- [What Does Oil Represent in the Bible? Anointing, the Holy Spirit, Healing and Joy](https://christianpure.com/learn/oil-in-scripture-meaning/)
- [Pentecost Sunday: what happened on the day of Pentecost?](https://christianpure.com/learn/understanding-pentecost-sunday-christian-history/)
- [Holy Ghost vs Holy Spirit: Same Person, Two English Names](https://christianpure.com/learn/holy-ghost-vs-holy-spirit/)
- [There Are No Explosions in the Bible, and God Was Not in the Fire](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-dreams-explosions/)
- [Prayers for Calm in a Storm: Bad Weather and the Storms of Life](https://christianpure.com/learn/life-storms-calm-prayers/)

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