Treatises of old testament theology never fail to remind us that ruach, the Hebrew word for ‘spirit', also means ‘wind’ or ‘breath'. Of these three meanings, that of wind appears to have been the most primitive. One can see how natural it is to think of the wind as an act of God. Invisible, immensely powerful and sometimes catastrophic in its effects, it is also of mysterious origin, transcendant and quite uncircurnscribed in its activity. This ‘wind symbolism', primitive though it is, is of permanent theological value. It is to be found in the late and developed theology of Ecclesiastes. ‘Going southwards, turning about northwards, about and about goes the wind’ (i, 6) ‘ … you know not what the way of the wind is’ (xi, 5). In the new testament it is taken up in the teaching of our Lord himself.