So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, while he was sleeping, he took one of his sides and covered it with flesh, then the Lord God built a woman from the side he had taken from the man and he brought her to the man. In all of the history of the Hebrew language, that word side, it never means rib, it refers to the side of a building, it refers to the side of a hill or the side of a stone. What’s the idea here, we have the human, and God takes from the side and makes another one, the one that we learned about from Genesis chapter one, about the paired, the one humanity that consists of male and female. Notice the architectural imagery, he takes from the side and then architects and builds the woman and then he closes up flesh, this isn’t about material composition, this is about who and what humans are and our identity and our nature, the one humanity that’s made of man and woman.
The serpent figure is just part of God’s good creation. Sometimes the serpent figure is talked about as if he is essential evil and has always been so. The story portrays him as an opponent, an antagonist, whose identity is understated, whose motives are unstated. This one who offers opposition, basically snoops around and sticks his nose in things that he shouldn’t. The serpent figure is introduced as a beast of the field and it’s a perceptive clever creature. He’s a good creature gone bad. Now, the key is that the humans have a choice about how they’re going to go about building this world and that’s represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Up till now, God has provided and defined what is good and what is not good, but now, God is giving humans the dignity and the freedom of a choice, are they going to trust God’s definition of good and evil or are they going to seize autonomy and define good and evil for themselves. To rebel against God is to embrace death, because you’re turning away from the giver of life himself, this is represented by the tree of life.
The story portrays the serpent figure as a fallen creature, just like the humans are going to be fallen creatures. Adam and Eve have already been given a whole realm to rule, but the serpent figure talks them into something that hasn’t been appointed to them, to be like Elohim and rule the sky as well, but the deception works, and they end up doing what God said not to do. And so they bring on themselves an exile out of Eden that leads unto their death. The Jewish people have prayed these well known words as a way of expressing their devotion to God, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 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. Let’s look at the word “soul,” the Hebrew word is “nephesh,” the English translation of this word is “soul.” The English word “soul” comes with lots of baggage from ancient Greek philosophy, it’s 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’s a ghost in the machine kind of idea, this notion is totally foreign to the Bible, it’s 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. 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. In Genesis, there were thirty three nephesh in Jacob’s family, that is, thirty three people. In the Torah, a murderer is called a nephesh slayer, a kidnapper is called nephesh thief. In the Bible, both humans and animals are called a “living nephesh,” if the life breath has left a human or animal, the nephesh remains, it’s just called a dead nephesh, a corpse.
In the Bible, people don’t have a nephesh, they are a nephesh, a living breathing physical being. Most people assume the Bible says the soul is what survives apart from the body after death, the Bible does have a concept of people existing after death, waiting for their resurrection, but it doesn’t use the word “nephesh.” So, even though nephesh is often translated as “soul,” the Hebrew word really refers to the whole human as a living physical organism. In fact, this is why biblical people can often use this word to refer to themselves and it gets translated “me” or “I,” in Psalm 1:19, most translations read “Let me live that I may praise you,” in Hebrew, the poet literally says, “Let my nephesh live that it may praise you,” by using nephesh, the poet emphasizes that their entire being, their life and their body offer thanks to God.
In there Song of Songs, the young woman constantly refers to her lover as “the one my nephesh loves,” love isn’t just an intellectual experience, it’s in the emotion that activates your whole body, your entire nephesh. This helps us understand the brilliance of other biblical poets who could combine multiple meanings of nephesh in one place. In Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water, so my nephesh pants after you,” my nephesh thirsts for the living God on a physical level, your throat can be thirsty like a deer’s, but then that physical thirst can become a metaphor for how your whole physical being longs to know and be known by your creator. To love God with all of your nephesh, means to devote your whole physical existence to your creator, the one who granted us these amazing bodies in the first place. It’s about offering your entire being, with all of its capabilities and limitations in the effort to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
God told his heavenly family he wanted to create humanity, people often think God addressed the other members of the trinity, but that is not the case, the other members of the trinity are co-equal and co-omniscient, Job 38:4,7 tells us the sons of God were present at the creation. Both of God’s families represent him, humans and the heavenly host are both like God, the supernatural sons of God represent him and we represent God on earth. God’s decision to share his attributes with both his supernatural and human children, one of those attributes is freedom, or free will, it is freedom, not mere intelligence that allows for meaningful choices. Having freedom meant God’s children might choose to rebel. Job 15:15 tells us God doesn’t trust his holy ones, he knows they can fail, both humans and the heavenly sons of God represent him in their respective realm.
Eden was the home and headquarters of God, his supernatural and earthly families resided there, heaven and earth, blended together into one family. One family member didn’t like that idea, a guardian cherub gets kicked out of Eden, the serpent figure was actually a supernatural being whose job was to guard God’s throne, a rebel in the divine council. Like the supernatural rebel, Adam and Eve rebelled too, the garden is tragically lost, and the evil and death enters into God’s good world. The rebel was cast down, it gets cursed and assigned a position of low status in the dirt. You’ll crawl on your belly and eat dust. He brought death to earth, now everyone would die, he became Lord of the Dead, since everyone would die, humanity would be his.
The serpent figure is just part of God’s good creation. Sometimes the serpent figure is talked about as if he is essential evil and has always been so. The story portrays him as an opponent, an antagonist, whose identity is understated, whose motives are unstated. This one who offers opposition, basically snoops around and sticks his nose in things that he shouldn’t. The serpent figure is introduced as a beast of the field and it’s a perceptive clever creature. He’s a good creature gone bad. Now, the key is that the humans have a choice about how they’re going to go about building this world and that’s represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Up till now, God has provided and defined what is good and what is not good, but now, God is giving humans the dignity and the freedom of a choice, are they going to trust God’s definition of good and evil or are they going to seize autonomy and define good and evil for themselves. To rebel against God is to embrace death, because you’re turning away from the giver of life himself, this is represented by the tree of life.
The story portrays the serpent figure as a fallen creature, just like the humans are going to be fallen creatures. Adam and Eve have already been given a whole realm to rule, but the serpent figure talks them into something that hasn’t been appointed to them, to be like Elohim and rule the sky as well, but the deception works, and they end up doing what God said not to do. And so they bring on themselves an exile out of Eden that leads unto their death. The Jewish people have prayed these well known words as a way of expressing their devotion to God, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 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. Let’s look at the word “soul,” the Hebrew word is “nephesh,” the English translation of this word is “soul.” The English word “soul” comes with lots of baggage from ancient Greek philosophy, it’s 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’s a ghost in the machine kind of idea, this notion is totally foreign to the Bible, it’s 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. 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. In Genesis, there were thirty three nephesh in Jacob’s family, that is, thirty three people. In the Torah, a murderer is called a nephesh slayer, a kidnapper is called nephesh thief. In the Bible, both humans and animals are called a “living nephesh,” if the life breath has left a human or animal, the nephesh remains, it’s just called a dead nephesh, a corpse.
In the Bible, people don’t have a nephesh, they are a nephesh, a living breathing physical being. Most people assume the Bible says the soul is what survives apart from the body after death, the Bible does have a concept of people existing after death, waiting for their resurrection, but it doesn’t use the word “nephesh.” So, even though nephesh is often translated as “soul,” the Hebrew word really refers to the whole human as a living physical organism. In fact, this is why biblical people can often use this word to refer to themselves and it gets translated “me” or “I,” in Psalm 1:19, most translations read “Let me live that I may praise you,” in Hebrew, the poet literally says, “Let my nephesh live that it may praise you,” by using nephesh, the poet emphasizes that their entire being, their life and their body offer thanks to God.
In there Song of Songs, the young woman constantly refers to her lover as “the one my nephesh loves,” love isn’t just an intellectual experience, it’s in the emotion that activates your whole body, your entire nephesh. This helps us understand the brilliance of other biblical poets who could combine multiple meanings of nephesh in one place. In Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water, so my nephesh pants after you,” my nephesh thirsts for the living God on a physical level, your throat can be thirsty like a deer’s, but then that physical thirst can become a metaphor for how your whole physical being longs to know and be known by your creator. To love God with all of your nephesh, means to devote your whole physical existence to your creator, the one who granted us these amazing bodies in the first place. It’s about offering your entire being, with all of its capabilities and limitations in the effort to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
God told his heavenly family he wanted to create humanity, people often think God addressed the other members of the trinity, but that is not the case, the other members of the trinity are co-equal and co-omniscient, Job 38:4,7 tells us the sons of God were present at the creation. Both of God’s families represent him, humans and the heavenly host are both like God, the supernatural sons of God represent him and we represent God on earth. God’s decision to share his attributes with both his supernatural and human children, one of those attributes is freedom, or free will, it is freedom, not mere intelligence that allows for meaningful choices. Having freedom meant God’s children might choose to rebel. Job 15:15 tells us God doesn’t trust his holy ones, he knows they can fail, both humans and the heavenly sons of God represent him in their respective realm.
Eden was the home and headquarters of God, his supernatural and earthly families resided there, heaven and earth, blended together into one family. One family member didn’t like that idea, a guardian cherub gets kicked out of Eden, the serpent figure was actually a supernatural being whose job was to guard God’s throne, a rebel in the divine council. Like the supernatural rebel, Adam and Eve rebelled too, the garden is tragically lost, and the evil and death enters into God’s good world. The rebel was cast down, it gets cursed and assigned a position of low status in the dirt. You’ll crawl on your belly and eat dust. He brought death to earth, now everyone would die, he became Lord of the Dead, since everyone would die, humanity would be his.
