The Origin of the Soul
The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
In the book of Genesis, God made human beings with dust from the ground and the breath of life. These are figurative terms for two elements: the body and the spirit. So, a living being is the combination of the body and the spirit.
Some people suppose that when a person dies, he ceases to exist. But this is not the case. Instead, the Bible tells us that the spirit, or the soul, returns to God. In other words, death is the separation of the spirit from the body, not the extinction of them both. The spirit continues to live.
[A]nd the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
We can see the destinations of the body and the soul respectively. The body returns to the earth, but the spirit returns to God. The key word here is “returns.” By definition, “return” means to go back to a former place. God’s dwelling place is the kingdom of heaven (Psalm 102:19). This is the former place our spirit goes back to. It means before being on this earth, our spirit already existed in heaven.