Speaking Your Mind
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NASB
A living being– In the Hebrew text, these significant words are nepeš ḥayyâ (for us, sounds like nefesh hayyah). The words themselves are fertile ground for all kinds of translation assumptions. For example, the NASB provides a footnote indicating that the meaning could be “soul.” But as we all know, “soul” isn’t a Hebrew idea at all. It is a Greek philosophical construct, now well ensconced in Western thinking but probably not what the author of Genesis had in mind. The double yod in hayyah is also a source of various explanations, as we noted some time ago.
But for the moment, let’s bypass a critique of the various ways “living being” has been treated and concentrate on an unusual and revealing Talmudic rendering. A synonym for nefesh hayyah in the Mishnah (Bava Kanna 2a) is mav’eh which the Talmud derives from the root ba’ah (to ask, request, seek). Furthermore, Onkelos, in Targum Genesis, renders nefesh hayyah as “speaking spirit” (ruah mamlal’).
Gives you pause for thought, right?
What if being human is really being a speaking creature? Wouldn’t that be in God’s image? With the exception of a few speaking animals, the only really speaking beings are either divine or human. Maybe what makes us like God isn’t so much our independent volitional capacity but rather our ability to communicate meaning, much like God speaks meaning and purpose into existence. Doesn’t that help us understand Paul’s statement, “…and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ”? This raises lots of questions about the relationship between verbalization and spirituality. Are we human simply because we can speak meaning into existence? Or does our humanity depend on what we speak in terms of meaning and purpose? Or another path of inquiry: How does the ability to communicate in words change our view of what constitutes human being? How does this concept help us understand human development? What does this mean for children who are not yet able to verbalize in words? Is language the defining characteristic of humans?
Just to be sure we don’t overlook some of the other implications in this verse, we should notice that the expression “the breath of life” isn’t quite what the Hebrew text says. In Hebrew, the text is nĕšāmâ ḥayyim, that is, the plural of ḥayyâ. It is really “the breath of lives,” but perhaps in Hebrew thought we are constituted in such a way that each one of us is really a plural. No one exists as an independent being in the human community. We are “lives” encapsulated in individual bodies.
Just one more thing to think about in this surprisingly visionary text.
Topical Index: nepeš ḥayyâ, mav’eh, nĕšāmâ ḥayyim, living being, human, Genesis 2:7
I speak, therefore I am?
Try the word “communicate” instead of “speak”. Even light carries information. In fact, we are now suspicious that not only does the body power itself more by light than by calories, it uses photons to power instant communication between cells, too. When cells do not have the capacity to communicate with each other, the body starts to break down (die) in that place. All nature communes (praises) with its Creator by means of allowing Him full expression through itself: a true circuit of the character of God in His creation. Ps. 19 is a paean to this phenomenon. Death is where the two-way circuit has been damaged or broken. I think love is the mysterious wave length of life (which is that full communication) by which all creation was made to extend the nature of God. We are that part of that nature that KNOWS that it is praising Him so as to share in His conscious joy that praise expresses. Death is anywhere that communication of God with Himself by means of that creation is being interrupted or corrupted. Only the choice of free will could introduce such a phenomenon.
I was being a bit tongue in cheek (where’s that facetiousness font when ya need it?), though I do like the idea. In other words, I intended a dual meaning.
I agree that we are made to communicate with God and that hindered communication (on our part, not His) impedes that relationship.
Ha ha. Where’s the double entendre font to reply back to it? There was a bit of that in my reply.
Seriously though, as part of creation, I believe that we, as images, were given speech so as to allow (use our will to choose the expression of the will of God) God to speak love (life) into His creation through us – a revelation of His character in ours. Kinda like a continual Mt. Sinai experience?
Laurita, who are the suspicious “we”? I want to add, as a thought that emerged from the discussion my husband and I had this morning… “if I know the right thing to do and I do it not, it is sin for me” (James 4:17). We tied that to how Adam did not do the right thing at the tree and “it was counted to him as sin, yet the woman was deceived” (and I am apparently completely misremembering this passage because I cannot find it in a word search… 2 Cor 11:3 and 1 Tim 2:14, Romans 5:14 help but why am I “remembering” something that doesn’t seem to be in the text (it is so frustrating when that happens!)). Failed communication…
Skip (or anyone),
I’d read that the plural in Hebrew is sometimes used for intensification of some sort rather than plurality. Is that correct? If so, perhaps that might apply here?
This article exemplifies the point I wish to make: outreachjudaism dot org/elohim-plural/
At the above link, in answering a question related to an attempt at using Elohim as ‘proof’ of a plurality of God YHWH, the author provides the examples of Gen 27:46 and Job 10:12 to illustrate that the plural chayyim (he uses chayim) is really meant to be understood as singular (the contexts make that clear).
The LXX translates chayyim as the singular zōēs (in the genitive modifying pnoē, “breath”, “wind”, translation of neshama)
I’m disappointed no one picked up on this, as I thought we were all pursuing truth, no matter where it leads. If “Elohim” in Gen 1:1 (and etc.) does not mean a plurality of GOD, and “Elohim” in Ex 4:16 does not mean more than one Moses, what do we make of the verse in this TW? The answer is that one must look to the associated verb. If the verb is singular, then the associated noun is singular. In Gen 2:7 neshama, “breath” is singular. Thus, the noun should be understood as singular.
See here: gci dot org/articles/is-elohim-a-plural-word/
ADDED: Considering this further, I looked at Psalm 82:6. Interestingly, the verb is singular, yet both Elohim and the associated pronouns “you” and “sons” are plural. Moreover, the overall context is in the plural, so, clearly, Elohim is meant to be plural in this instance.
Thank you, Skip. I, too, think we have missed out on a lot by thinking we have to confine ourselves to our Greek heritage, where, in their (and our) determination to reduce everything to the singular, I fear we have lost a lot of our capacity to think holistically: to really understand echad: the One that is never alone. Life is not a singular experience, for we never find ‘it’ alone: nor is it reductionist, for we have never been able to reverse-engineer it from singular pieces. Life is more than a sum of its parts, for I believe the sum came first before those parts: there was the whole before the pieces: out of life comes all the rest, for that Life spoke that rest into existence.
Because I believe the account in Genesis, I believe the Big Bang was actually a big Voice speaking the spaces non-life notches in between that life into reality so as to give life a way to differentiate – to be other than whole – for the purposes of love to weave that whole back together from those pieces BY CHOICE. I suspect that life is larger than any of its manifestations: that life, like all the other things of God, mysteriously ‘humbled’ itself in those separated pieces: submitted itself to the non-life space in between, so as to permit sentient, choosing beings the chance to continuously participate in a voluntary submission of themselves back into that whole again: to continuously recreate the echad of life through the power of that choice.
When I choose to allow love to be the gas in my tank: to motivate my day: I am allowing the great Weaver to weave that whole (holiness) back together again through me. To be devoted to God (which is what holiness is) is to not resist His Spirit’s work of love in me. In this sinful world that is broken and in its death throes, that includes a continuous repair of the brokenness by faith in life. Through the mighty name of Yeshua Ha-Mashiach – Jesus Christ – we, too, have been given a Way to speak life back into existence in all those places that the web has been broken. Am I using the power of that Name (which is that character) correctly today in my speech? Does the Way, the Truth and the Life (the character of Yeshua) have full expression in me? When I walk down the street, do those around me say “look: there goes love!”?
Laurita, yet again you have me stroking my beard and thinking… hmmm…
“I suspect that life is larger than any of its manifestations”
To me, it is, without a doubt! Whenever I see the term “Big Bang,” I have a mental picture of the Creator who called LIGHT (enlightenment ? wisdom ?), and knowing that everything that IS, is vibrations that become expressed in one form or another, it seems almost understandable that the beginning of that vibration (sound) from the Creator, would indeed, be manifested as a Big Bang. This terminology is never an issue for me, but the ‘imagery’ is not really understood when I try to explain it to my friends who have only known it as applied to modern godless theories. And yet, in my tiny little brain, it is one of the most wondrous things ever!
Yes there goes love ?!!!!
Yah spoke and BANG!
…Kinda like a collection of lives in search of a story?
You relayed a kaleidoscope of communication Richard.
Could the lives refer to the CHI or god life in man which was lost or left man wheneating the forbidden tre, and the nefesh or personal soul life Adam and Eve had and which Adam passed onto Seth?
John, I don’t understand what you’re saying here…can you clarify?
Skip. Now I understand the word is, with God. And this word took on flesh. May just be implying God’s fullness is us living out the life or things he plants in our minds. Job said through dreams, visions and prophecies added later by other witnesses.
We create and colour our world in with our thoughts or refined version of what was communicated to us. And we forget the original message or 14 spiritual gifts bestowed on man…
Stop thinking and start doing you always reiterate. Many lives to live we may not settle for the one we understand…