Job 34:14-15, “If He should set His heart to it and gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”
Elihu here anchors the continued existence of all created life in the heart of YHWH—that is to say, in His will. Any “flesh”—which I think can be extended even to all of the material world—any “flesh” persists in its being because YHWH’s “heart” is “set” to continue upholding this being by His own Spirit—by His own breath. It is as though the entire cosmos were a note continuing in its existence by the breath of God, or as though all of Creation were sustained moment by moment by the mouth-to-mouth breathing of YHWH into her lungs. The breath, the Spirit, the ex-spiration of God into the bellows of creaturely being is the moment-by-moment reality by which all things receive and persist in their existence.
We might take this analogy further and suggest that the “mouth” by which YHWH God breathes His life into that which is not Himself is the slain and risen Jesus Christ—the Word made flesh.
Yes, the flesh of the Son—proven to be truly flesh in the moment of His death when He breathes down His own spirit—the flesh of the Son is the “mouth” by which the Breath of God is ex-spirated into the lungs of lifeless Creation. The incarnate body of Christ is, as it were, the “lips” of the Creator, set in love to those of the Bridal Cosmos (the Cosmos, one might say, whose “lips” are humanity) from Beginning. These are the “lips” parted in the exhalation of Calvary, through which is breathed down from the cross the same Spirit who hovers over the waters in Genesis 1.
Indeed, we might say that it is by The Son’s exhalation of love, breathed down from His cross before the foundation of the earth (cf. Rev.13:8), that all of creation receives and persists in being.
Glory to God—He has not set His heart to withhold His Spirit, but has set His heart to pour out His Spirit, to breathe down His breath from the heights of the eternal throne of His cross and so to give—moment-by-moment—being and life to all things. Hallowed be His Name.
