Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 37:145 (Jan 1880)
Article: The Meaning Of נֶשׁ A Contribution To Biblical Psychology
Author: William Henry Cobb

BSac 37:145 (Jan 1880) p. 134

The Meaning Of נֶשׁ
A Contribution To Biblical Psychology

Rev. WM. Henry Cobb

It cannot be too often repeated, as a fundamental law of hermeneutics, that language must be interpreted as it would be understood by the persons addressed. Ideas remain the same among all nations and in all ages, but the same word may stand for widely different ideas. Nothing can be more crude, therefore, than to take a single English equivalent of a Hebrew word of many meanings and attempt to settle, under the authority of inspiration, the true sense of that English term by loading upon it all the significations of which the Hebrew word is capable. The two questions, What is a soul? and What is a nephesh? should be kept entirely distinct. Each question may be answered by a careful examination of the respective words as they occur in English or in Hebrew literature. For it is a principle which must never be lost sight of, that inasmuch as ideas are constant, the meaning of a single word is best determined by its necessary force in its context. A sentence is an equation; when all the terms but one are given, although philology does not deal in mathematical certainties, it will yet assign an approximate value to the unknown quantity. If we have a hundred equations we can deduce our x with a good degree of confidence.

Apply this process to the English word soul, and it becomes perfectly clear that this word, as at present used in our literature, denotes an immaterial substance, the seat of thought, feeling, and volition. It by no means follows from this that the ancient Hebrews attached such a meaning to נֶפֶשׁ; but from the fact that, in certain infrequent cases, נפֶשׁ is applied to the body, how much less does it follow that the English words body and soul are to be confounded. Yet the latter reasoning is precisely that of the annihilationists, or (if any would discard that name) of all those materialists who endeavor to defend their belief from the Bible.1

BSac 37:145 (Jan 1880) p. 135

The word נֶפֶשׁ occurs seven hundred and fifty-four times in the Hebrew Scriptures. An insignificant fraction of this number (about one thirtieth) includes all the cases where it refers to the body. These instances are made plain by the connection in which they occur, and the same is true of those passages (eight times as numerous) where the mind, rather than the body, is meant. It is both unphilosophical and unfair to claim that because a Hebrew could speak of touching a נֶפֶשׁ (meaning a dead body) we may speak of touching a soul. Materialists may prove, if they ...