What the lexicon says. רוּחַ (ruach) is glossed "wind, breath, mind, spirit", and the sense list moves from "breath" and "wind" through "spirit, animation, vivacity, vigour", "courage", "temper, anger", "impatience, patience", "prophetic spirit", and on to the Spirit of God. Strong's 1890 entry runs the same range: "Wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; figuratively, life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extension, a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit."
What the text does with it. "and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2, ASV). "The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life" (Job 33:4, ASV), where the second line uses a different word. "The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, Searching all his innermost parts" (Proverbs 20:27, ASV).
🚨 The lexicon entry for this word contains doctrine, and that must be said out loud. Sense 1g of the TBESH entry reads: "Spirit of God, the third person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit, coequal, coeternal with the Father and the Son", and its final sub-sense reads "never referred to as a depersonalised force". That is a nineteenth-century lexicon making a theological argument inside a definition, not a neutral report of how a Hebrew word is used. The doctrine of the Trinity is held across historic Christianity; that is not in question here. What is in question is the method: a claim of that kind belongs to the tradition that holds it and must be attributed, not served as though it were the plain sense of a noun. The rest of the entry, breath, wind, temper, courage, is lexical description and is used as such above.
Sources: Genesis 1:2; Job 33:4; Proverbs 20:27; TBESH entry H7307G; Strong's Hebrew Dictionary (1890), entry H7307.
---