12:9 Father of spirits. This unique phrase tells us that God not only created the human body and the marvelous mechanism for its reproduction through the process of procreation but that He also has “fathered” a separate “spirit,” apparently at the time of conception for each human body. Thus our earthly fathers were biologically the progenitors of our physical and mental natures, but God Himself was the Father of our spirits. When we die, each body returns to the dust, but “the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Note also II Corinthians 5:8.