For thousands of years, every morning and evening, Jewish people have prayed these well-known words as a way of expressing their devotion to God. They are called the "Shema." "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and as for you, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength." We are going to look at the word "soul". The Hebrew word is "nephesh". It occurs over 700 times in the Old Testament.
The common English translation of this word is "soul". That is kind of unfortunate. Here is why.
The English word "soul" comes with lots of baggage from ancient Greek philosophy.
It is the idea that the soul is a non-physical, immortal essence of a person that is contained or trapped in their body to be released at death.
It is a "ghost in the machine" kind of idea. This notion is totally foreign to the Bible.
It is not at all what nephesh means in biblical Hebrew. The most basic meaning of nephesh is "throat", like when the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness.
They are hungry and thirsty, and they say to God, "We miss the cucumbers and melons we had in Egypt. Now our nephesh has dried up." Or when Joseph was hauled off into slavery in Egypt, his nephesh was put into iron shackles. But nephesh doesn't only mean throat.
Since your whole life and body depend on what comes in and out of your throat, Nephesh could also be used to refer to the whole person.
Like in Genesis, there were 33 nephesh in Jacob's family. That is, 33 people. In the Torah, a murderer is called a nephesh slayer.
The kidnapper is called a nephesh thief. On the first pages of the Bible, both humans and animals are called a "living nephesh".
