THE BEAT e136 “Let my nephesh live, that it may praise you.” – Psalm 119:175 (a little more soul talk)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.  

Season 2 Episode 136 

THE BEAT | “Let my nephesh live, that it may praise you.” – Psalm 119:175 (a little more soul talk)

Quick Take

Hey human, in this episode we straighten out a few things about the word for soul in the Old Testament. And consider how this reflects on the life of an Israelite, the relationship with God, before Jesus. And how Jesus returns to the Shema.  Join us for e136.  Thanks for listening.

How are you praising God with your nephesh today?

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

What am I talking about? In episode 128 I launched into a closer look at the word “soul” and what it means, how a focused commitment to a deeper understanding of it will help my spiritual growth and a closer relationship with my Maker.

I said I have somehow become a self-proclaimed guardian of how others use it as God intended. I confessed this because it makes me anxious, it makes me angry that it is used in compromising contexts that offend and dilute the efficacy of salvation. The power of his sovereign nature and all the promises within his nature that ride on this word, soul.

There is a reverence, an eternal weight to my soul that I want to fully embrace in this life.

I started by defending God’s right to it, as the Creator of it. And with this comes his sovereign hand on it.

I shared an insight from Packer’s book, Knowing God. He defines the process by which our conscience atrophies. Packer sets the premise straight on the outset: we were made to bear God’s moral image.

God is the image we are bearing witness to when we live for him.

My affirmations began like this: The definition of the soul lives in Psalm 139 for me. I am nestled within God’s soul as a believer. And Jesus put me back there.

And, I am full of a soulful God, that my spirit helps care for someone else’s soul in the undefinable love of God within my spirit. In my relationships I perceive that God has given me the power to be a soul caregiver.

My soul is the house within which spiritual transcendence is possible. Because God is spirit.

John 4:23-24

 

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

 

The spirit is my connection with God, communication with God. My spirit is of the Holy Spirit, the power and the realm of transcendence. The passing through of God’s infinite goodness to my ability to love someone in the spirit of his love is all about tending to someone’s soul. Because our free will also means the soul is where sin nature lives and the ability to do evil works.

Check out e128 for full entrée into this. My search started in the Old Testament, where God’s power in his story begins for us. The Hebrew word “nephesh” means soul, with one definition as “to take breath, refresh oneself.” I ended with Psalm 103 thinking praise was the perfect place to pause in my pursuit.

Psalm 103

 

Of David.

 

1 Praise the Lord, my soul;

    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the Lord, my soul,

    and forget not all his benefits—

As it turns out, it is also the place to start back up again to understand the definition in context of the Israelites. More personally, what it meant to an Israelite living in Old Testament times. A King David said, “Praise the Lord, my nephesh…”

The three concepts I share in today’s episode literally come from a 4-minute video produced by The Bible Project, a short and concise look at the word as the Israelites used it. Since I am fresh off my read-through of the Old Testament this is a clear-headed time for me to commit this to memory. I spend a lot of time in the Old Testament, in the lives of God’s people.

But why does how they see matter to my life now? Because the power of God’s story moves forward from what his relationship was with man at creation, to the chosen nation, to the need to send his beloved Son to come to earth and show the new relationship, the new covenant. And a fuller understanding of our soul with the Holy Spirit living within us.

So, let’s get clear about how the Israelites perceived this within the lives of a chosen people, kings, and prophets. It’s not a nuanced focus. This is not an offbeat pursuit. Nephesh is used more than 700 times in the Old Testament.

I pause here to say something about my sources. I read mostly the work of scholars. I also pray for God’s direction in consuming that which is beautifully simple. And mind-boggling. Because Jesus is both of those things. This video is 4 minutes long, cued by a close sister in Christ. We share a love for the work of The Bible Project, and Dr. Tim Mackie. He is a Hebrew Biblical scholar with such a spiritual gift for offering the deepest truths in the clearest manner. In his words, “He is passionate about helping people understand the Bible’s narrative and its connection to Jesus.” Bookmark the video to watch this week. And return to it.

I personally think it is so important in our walk to hang on to the simplest of definitions. The words that will travel well in your life.  By travel well, I mean “packing lite” so we remember and can recall quickly in every context.

The Whole Human

I retained three concepts from this source.

The first concept noted the challenge of translating nephesh into “soul” in English. The English word “soul” has inherited baggage from ancient Greek philosophy, that it is a non-physical, immortal essence of a person that when it dies it departs the body, that it has been trapped. That it is separate.

That is not what the Hebrew word “nephesh” means. Nephesh is the whole human, as a living human organism. The basic meaning is “throat” which makes sense since everything goes into the body to sustain the body goes through the throat.

For example, the Israelites complaining about not having the food they had in Egypt while in the wilderness. My throat has dried up, thus my body.

Numbers 11:6

 

Now our nephesh has dried up.

 

In Genesis Dr. Mackie shares this example:

Genesis 46:15 (KJV)

 

15 These be the sons of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in Padanaram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three.

This illustrates that the Israeli people “are” a nephesh. A living organism.

He goes on to cite Psalm 119:175 noting that the Hebrew translation reads like this:

Let my nephesh live, that it may praise you. (Psalm 119:175)

(rather than “let me live, that I may praise you”)

The second concept was the beautiful way the Old Testament poets and authors used nephesh metaphorically.

One quick example of the Hebrew translation:

Psalm 42:1 (KJV)

 

42 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

Such a beautiful display of thirsting physically and thirsting spiritually for God. The Israelites understood this a a full body experience. The way thirst would be all-consuming, for water and for God. The entire body. I am reminded of my recent read-thru, and thinking our God is a God of metaphors. He uses hundreds of examples from his creation because he is intimate with it. He made it. I will come back to this.

The Shema

The final concept was a look at a central prayer in the Jewish faith. The Shema was an act of devotion every morning and every night that an Israelite recited.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5

 

Hear, o Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One. And as for you, you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all of your soul, and with all of your strength.

 

So in the Shema, an Israelite was praying that he would love the Lord his God with his nephesh, his entire being, his life and his body offered in praise of God.

With all your nephesh.

I stop here. I remain in the country of nephesh for a while. None of this deeper dive is meant to be set-up as an argument, or a comparison, really. It is meant to bear witness to the relationship an Israelite had with God, how it was perceived physically and mentally before Jesus Christ.

As an Israelite, a relationship with God was very physical. It was bloody, smelly sacrifices for offerings, timbrels and singing, conquering the land, working the land, tearing sack cloths and falling to the ground, listening to prophets to hear God’s word, approaching the priests to sanctify the offerings, a day filled with physical details to honor God, a day filled with 10 commandments and 600+ laws that required action. Physical actions that kept their God dwelling in their ark of the covenant.

It seems to weight heavily on a physical relationship. Seeking the presence of God through physical elements. A fire, a cloud, a prophet’s voice, a staff, a Moses, a Jordan River, a raven, a brook, a guilt offering…

An Israelite recited a lot of scripture, a daily life filled with recitation, especially the young Jewish boys in training for discipleship. God’s word over and over again. It was a very physical devotion. It was the shema morning and night. It was the shema all day. Through his people, God cited nephesh more than 700 times. Not by mistake, but by response to a sin nature, a stiff-necked peopled who needed to be prompted to claim their nephesh for one God, the one true God.

Jesus and the Shema

Jesus responded with the Shema after he silenced the Sadducees.  When the Pharisees tested him.

Matthew 22:34-40

 

The Greatest Commandment

 

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I am comforted that Jesus quoted the Shema. That he was with his Heavenly Father when all the Israelites were offering up their Shema morning and night. That he aligned with it as the first commandment. And made it the foundation for the second commandment, a commandment has everything to do with bringing God’s faith to our witness.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

That’s my God-rhythm for today, human.