Get the Greek Out

My soul keeps Your testimonies, and I love them exceedingly.  Psalm 119:167  NASB

My soul – It’s no surprise that the English translations of this verse use a word that is thoroughly Greek.  “Soul” came into English through Greek philosophy, and as such, represented that invisible, eternal element of human being that eventually left the corrupt material world behind and ascended to the pure, rational bliss of Heaven.  We have Plato to thank for all this.  But it’s a far cry from the Hebrew word nepeš, as you are undoubtedly aware.  Why English translations continue to use a Greek-based concept rather than the Hebraic idea is a serious question for Christian theologians and believers.  Perhaps it’s not simply two thousand years of traditional translation.  Perhaps it’s deeper than that; a systematic attempt to remove the physical, earthly environment of Hebraic thinking and replace it with an other-world spirituality that eschews our corporeal existence.  Whatever the motivation at the beginning, today we suffer from this bifurcated view of reality where we can speak of flesh and spirit, body and soul, earth and heaven, and think that we’re being more spiritual when we move away from the created order.

The psalmist never thought like this.  Nepeš is the Hebrew word that encompasses all of human existence.  It is the complete homogenization of what we think of as body, mind, and spirit.  Such separations do not exist in Hebrew.  “The original, concrete meaning of the word was probably ‘to breathe.’”. . . Since personal existence by its very nature involves drives, appetites, desires, will, nepeš denotes the “life” of an individual.^[1]

Accordingly, in some passages nepeš is best translated by “life,” but “life” here denotes the living self with all its drives, not the abstract notion “life” which is conveyed by ḥayyim, nor the other meaning of ḥayyim which refers to a quality of existence as well as the temporal notion of being (cf. the use of ḥayyim in Deut and Prov). Westermann noted that when nepeš occurs as the subject of the verb it is usually rendered “soul”—desires, inclinations, etc.; as the object of the verb it is frequently rendered by “life”—the state of personal existence as over against death.^[2]

We should think of nepeš as “person,” but not simply as the corporeal embodiment.  Rather, nepeš includes all that makes a person, that is, desire, emotion, cognition, appetite, volition—indeed, everything that makes you who you are.  There is no spiritual/physical separation here.  Everything about nepeš pushes us toward a holistic, practical, tangible view of Man.  Now read this verse again.  You’ll remember that ʿēd^ewōtê is all God’s history and involvement with Israel, all the festivals, all the fatherly advice, everything that affects the community.  When the psalmist tells us that  his whole existence keeps all this, he’s telling us that his identity is tied directly to his God.  He can’t imagine his life without this.

Topical Index: ʿēd^ewōtê, testimonies, nepeš, soul, person, Psalm 119:167

^[1] Waltke, B. K. (1999). 1395 נָפַשׁ. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 589). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.