Job 32:8

8. But there is a spirit in man Literally, But the Spirit, it is in mortal man; or, רוח היא , the Spirit itself is, etc. The parallel, “inspiration of the Almighty,” requires us to understand by the “spirit in man,” the divine Spirit. The Hebrew regarded all physical and spiritual power as a divine inspiration. The word rendered man is enosh, mortal or decaying man. See note Job 4:17. Frail and perishable man has a capacity for God: the vessel may be fragile, ( earthen, 2 Corinthians 4:7,) yet it may be not only the residence of the divine Spirit, but the medium through which it may act. Through faith in God Elihu is emboldened to speak upon a subject that has overtasked his superiors. The divine Spirit honoured his confidence by making him (St. Augustine says) “as superior in wisdom as he was in modesty.”

The inspiration of the Almighty נשׁמת שׁדי , same as in Job 33:4, where it is rendered “the breath of the Almighty,” which in both cases agrees with the Vulgate; while the Septuagint, in like manner, gives for each, πνοη , breath. The same Hebrew is used in Genesis 2:7 for breath of life, which leads Mercerus unhesitatingly to say that Elihu alludes to the first creation of man, when God breathed into man the breath of life. See note Job 33:4; also a sermon by Dr. Bushnell, in loc., on “The Spirit in Man,” and Eaton’s Bampton Lecture, (1872.)