Charles Ellicott Commentary John 3:1

"Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:" — John 3:1 (ASV)

The word πνεῦμα (pneuma) occurs some 370 times in the Greek New Testament, and of these, twenty-three times in this Gospel. It is nowhere rendered “wind” by our translators, except in this instance, and they have rendered the same word “Spirit” in the same verse, and twice besides in the same context (John 3:5–6). There is another word for “wind” (ἄνεμος), which occurs thirty-one times in the New Testament, and which John himself uses in John 6:18.

It is not contended that πνεῦμα may not mean “wind” or “the breath of wind,” but this is not its New Testament use, where the word is restricted to its special meaning. (It is plural in Hebrews 1:7; see Note there.) It is also admitted that the Hebrew or Chaldee word which πνεῦμα here translates has the two senses, but the sense in which it is used here is fixed by the translator.