Ruach is one of the great words of the Hebrew Scriptures. It means breath, and wind, and spirit, and the same three consonants carry all three without apology, because to the people who cut them these were never three things. And Ruach is feminine. Through the overwhelming bulk of its several hundred occurrences the word takes feminine agreement, and the grammar built around it follows without hesitation. This is a fact about Hebrew before it is a claim about anything else. But it is a fact our translations have quietly worked around for a very long time.
Genesis 1:2 obeys it. The Ruach of Elohim is doing something over the face of the waters, and the participle that says so is merachefet — feminine, singular, unmistakable in the Hebrew however the English handles it. Most translations offer “moved,” or “was hovering,” and the choice of verb matters more than it appears to. The root is rachaf. It occurs three times in the whole of the Tanakh. Once here. Once in Yirmeyahu, where a man’s bones tremble inside him. And once in the song of Mosheh, where it describes a bird.
