GEN246 Speech differentiates human beings from other living beings and, in the Jewish view, makes us similar to God. In the Torah, God is said to have carried out the work of creation through speech, and the Rabbis later describe the Divine creation as having taken place through “Ten Sayings” Ethics of the Fathers 5:1. The second creation narrative’s account that “man became a living being” after God blew into his nostrils [this verse] is rendered by the Aramaic Targum Onkelos as “and it [=God’s breath] was in [the first] man as a speaking spirit.” Human speech can be creative, like God’s; witness the Jewish legal recognition that through speech human beings can change –re-create—the statuses of people (e.g., through vows of Naziriteship), animals (e.g., through designation as sacrifices), or things (e.g., through designation as tzedakah, charity). Human speech can also be the equivalent of murder Baba Metzia 58b. Of human beings, then, it can justifiably be said that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” Proverbs 18:21 and that “When [the tongue] is good, there is nothing better; when bad, there is nothing worse” Leviticus Rabbah 33:1. OXFORD 433