3. Are human beings the only ones that have the breath of life? Genesis 7:13-16.
NOTE: ‘When God created man, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” There was life, or spirit, if you please, in that breath; but the same thing was given to the lower animals for we read in Genesis 7:21, 22: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.”’ A. T. Jones: The American Sentinel, August 9, 1894.
4. Do animals die a different death from human beings? Ecclesiastes 3:19-20.
NOTE: ‘Just what this life is nobody knows, but when it leaves the body, whether of men or of beast, it returns to God who gave it. That this is so will appear from a comparison of Psalm 104:24-29 and Job 34:14. The first of these texts asserts what occurs when God gathers to Himself the breath of the beast; the second asserts substantially the same thing of man. While Ecclesiastes 3:19 says plainly: “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.”’ A. T. Jones: The American Sentinel, August 9, 1894.
5. Are animals also called “souls” in the Bible? Consider Revelation 16:3.
NOTE: ‘The term “living soul,” like “the breath of life,” is applied to all orders of the animate creation; to beasts and reptiles as well as to man. The Hebrew words are nephesh chaiyah; and these words are in the very first chapter of Genesis four times applied to the lower orders of animals: Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 30. On Genesis 1:21, Dr. Adam Clarke offers this comment:- “Nephesh chaiyah: a general term to express all creatures endued with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations, from the half-reasoning elephant down to the stupid potto, or lower still, to the polyp, which seems equally to share the vegetable and animal life.” This is a valuable comment on the meaning of these words. He would have greatly enhanced the utility of that information, if he had told us that the words “living soul,” as applied to man in Genesis 2:7, are the very same words that are rendered “living creatures,” and applied to the lower orders of animals in chapter 1.’ Uriah Smith: Here and Hereafter, page 46.