The breath came from God whether a metaphor or not.
You are trying to manufacture a thought that is not there.
As students of the Bible, we must resist our natural inclination to read the Genesis account as a set of instructions on how to create a universe. Otherwise, we may arrive at the wrong conclusion. Someone might unintentionally approach a verse like Genesis 2:7 with curiosity and assume that Moses gave his readers God's recipe for fashioning a human being. However, Moses is not instructing us on how to create a human being, that is, by taking some quality dust and imbuing it with the Holy Spirit. Rather than giving his readers the recipe for life, Moses means to clarify that our life and ability to live came from God himself.
Genesis 2:7 should be interpreted within the context of God's creative activity. While we may speculate about the process itself, the main takeaway from this verse is the concept that God can transform something common and insignificant into something rare and profound. And in this case, God created "a living being", or a "soul."
When a lifeless body was transformed by God, it resulted in the creation of a living being. This living being not only had the ability to walk and move around, but also possessed the capacity to think and act according to moral standards. It was capable of working, playing, relaxing, loving, exploring the world, understanding reality as it is, and possessing knowledge.
In essence, it began as an inanimate object and became a person. It started out as a WHAT and became a WHO.
As Christians living in this century, our vision of God needs to get bigger. We have a tendency to anthropomorphize God in order to make him more understandable. But unfortunately, in the process, we mistakenly act as if God is just another person like us. When we create something, we gather all the necessary materials together. When God creates something, he doesn't need to use available materials. He speaks everything into existence "exnihilo" i.e from nothing.
Therefore I conclude that we don't possess a soul, we ARE a soul. THAT is what Genesis 2:7 says. Man
became a soul.
The verse says nothing about our spirit, but that God breathed into us the breadth of life the same way many were inspired or God breathed throughout the OT.
My conclusion that God animated humankind with a spirit of its own comes from the idea that the Hebrew word for Spirit is the same or closely related to the Hebrew word for breath. And since Moses described a man as "a living being" we understand that God gave natural life to a human being. In addition to that, the Bible also associates spirit with other things that enliven us such as our thoughts and motives.
1 Corinthians 2:11
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
Paul believes that no man can know what someone else is thinking, only their own spirit can. Similarly, humans cannot know what God is thinking, only the Spirit of God can know that. However, if a person decides to communicate their thoughts through language, then it's possible for another person to know what they are thinking. But God chooses to communicate indirectly through prophets or apostles. Paul asserts that God has directly communicated his thoughts to him.
If, as you say, God animated man with the Holy Spirit, then all of mankind would know the thoughts God in a direct way. But as Paul said, the thoughts of God no one knows.
We are talking about the creation of the sons of God. We are not talking about Adam's descendants.
Who said anything about the sons of God?
I pointed out that the point should be applied to all humans. God gives life in the womb or takes it away, no? Then you deny that it is God literally breathing air into human life. If it is not air, nor the Holy Spirit, you have come up with a third option that is manufactured by human understanding and not from Scripture.
I am not aware of any Bible verses that explain what happens to a person in the womb. However, the book of Ecclesiastes states that after death, our bodies return to the earth as dust and our spirits return to God, who gave them to us. Therefore, it can be assumed that God gives each individual a unique spirit. However, there is no mention that God gives us His spirit.
David poetically suggests, "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s
womb." So one might argue that God's creative activity never stops. He creates each individual with special attention given to each particular individual. Even so, a broad examination of scripture will reveal that often the miraculous appears to have natural causes. For instance, many believe they have discovered a natural cause for the parting of the Red Sea. And yet, the Bible teaches us that the parting of the Red Sea was timed such that Israel was able to cross unharmed, while Egyptian armies drowned as the waters returned to normal.
The Bible maintains a distinction between actions that arise from natural, physical, chemical, and/or biological causes and supernatural, divine causes, even though, in the long run, everything has a divine cause. This distinction forms the backdrop to the discussion Jesus was having with Nicodemus. Jesus told Nicodemus that one needed to be born again. And Nicodemus' first thought was, "can a man return to his mother's womb?" From this question, we can conclude that Nicodemus was thinking in terms of natural causes. He was born according to natural causes, and he assumed that a second birth would also involve natural causes. Jesus quickly disabused Nicodemus of that idea, arguing that the new birth will have a supernatural cause and origin.
