The Spirit over the Waters: Creation, the Flood and the Red Sea, and the Waters of Baptism
Old Testament: Genesis 1:2; Genesis 8:1, 11
And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. ... And God remembered Noe, and all the living creatures, and all the cattle which were with him in the ark, and brought a wind upon the earth, and the waters were abated. ... And she came to him in the evening, carrying a bough of an olive tree, with green leaves, in her mouth.
Old Testament, also: Exodus 14:21-22
And when Moses had stretched forth his hand over the sea, the Lord took it away by a strong and burning wind blowing all the night, and turned it into dry ground: and the water was divided. And the children of Israel went in through the midst of the sea dried up: for the water was as a wall on their right hand and on their left.
New Testament: Matthew 3:16; John 3:5, 8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-2
And Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him. ... Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ... The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. ... For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea:
The connection
Scripture opens with the Spirit over the waters: "the spirit of God moved over the waters" (Genesis 1:2). The Hebrew word is ruach, which is breath, wind and spirit at once, and out of those waters God brought the world. When the flood had drowned that world, the same word returns: God "brought a wind upon the earth, and the waters were abated" (8:1), and the dove came back over the waters "carrying a bough of an olive tree" (8:11). At the Red Sea it blows again, "a strong and burning wind blowing all the night", and Israel "went in through the midst of the sea dried up" (Exodus 14:21-22). At the Jordan the figures meet in one Man. "Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove" (Matthew 3:16): the Spirit over the waters, and the dove, as at the beginning and after the flood. Christ tells Nicodemus how it reaches us: "unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ... The Spirit breatheth where he will" (John 3:5, 8). St Paul names the sea: "all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea" (1 Corinthians 10:2). St Jerome walks the whole road in one letter. The Spirit "moved, as a charioteer, over the face of the waters, and produced from them the infant world, a type of the Christian child that is drawn from the laver of baptism"; "the dove of the Holy Spirit comes to Noah as it came afterwards to Christ in the Jordan"; and Pharao's host is "overwhelmed in the Red Sea figuring thereby our baptism." St Ephrem sings, "In the beginning the Spirit that brooded moved on the waters ... The Holy Spirit has brooded in Baptism." The Catechism finds the same figures in the Church's blessing of the baptismal water: the Spirit over the waters of creation, the ark of Noe and the crossing of the Red Sea (CCC 1217-1221).
Moral sense
When God's wind blows over the water in Scripture, a way appears where there was none. It moves over the deep, and there is a world; it blows on the flood, and there is dry land; it blows all night on the sea, and there is a road through the middle of it. Baptism is that wind let into a soul: the old life goes under like Pharao's army, and a new creature comes up out of the water. No soul is too deep under the water for Him, for "The Spirit breatheth where he will".
Anagogical sense
The first creation came up out of the waters, and in the last there is no sea: "the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more" (Apocalypse 21:1). What remains is "a river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb" (22:1). The Spirit who moved over the deep at the beginning speaks at the end with the Bride: "And the spirit and the bride say: Come" (22:17).
The Fathers
St Jerome, Letter LXIX, to Oceanus, 6: "The Spirit of God above moved, as a charioteer, over the face of the waters, and produced from them the infant world, a type of the Christian child that is drawn from the laver of baptism ... the dove of the Holy Spirit comes to Noah as it came afterwards to Christ in the Jordan ... Pharaoh and his host ... are overwhelmed in the Red Sea figuring thereby our baptism." St Jerome, Dialogue against the Luciferians: "'The Spirit of the Lord,' says Moses, 'moved upon the face of the waters,' from which it appears that there is no baptism without the Holy Ghost." St Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns for the Epiphany VIII: "In the beginning the Spirit that brooded moved on the waters; they conceived and gave birth to serpents and fishes and birds. The Holy Spirit has brooded in Baptism".
Warrant
Patristic. St Jerome reads the Spirit over the waters, the dove of the flood and the Red Sea as figures of Baptism in one passage (Letter LXIX, to Oceanus, 6), and elsewhere concludes from Genesis 1:2 "that there is no baptism without the Holy Ghost" (Dialogue against the Luciferians); St Ephrem joins Genesis 1:2 to the font (Hymns for the Epiphany VIII). St Paul makes the Red Sea a baptism in so many words (1 Corinthians 10:2), which is Scriptural support for that part of the entry, but he does not speak of the wind. Checked in the Hebrew and the Greek: ruach stands at Genesis 1:2, Genesis 8:1 and Exodus 14:21. The Septuagint has pneuma theou epephereto epano tou hydatos at Genesis 1:2 and epegagen ho theos pneuma at 8:1, but anemos at Exodus 14:21. Matthew 3:16 has pneuma theou ... hosei peristeran, the Spirit of God of Genesis 1:2 and the peristera, the dove, of Genesis 8:11; John 3:8 has to pneuma hopou thelei pnei, the Spirit breathes, or the wind blows, where it will. Dunk found the entry by noticing that wind and water stand in the same verse across fourteen books of the Douay. Tertullian, earlier than Jerome and Ephrem, saw the same figures: the Spirit who hovered over the waters from the beginning lingers over the waters of the baptized, and as the dove came back with the olive branch after the flood, so the dove of the Holy Ghost comes to our flesh as it rises from the font (On Baptism 4 and 8).
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1218.
The verses
Genesis 1:2 · Genesis 8:1 · Genesis 8:11 · Exodus 14:21 · Exodus 14:22 · Matthew 3:16 · John 3:5 · John 3:8 · 1 Corinthians 10:1 · 1 Corinthians 10:2
