Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
nephesh
Soul, life, self, appetite, throat. The animals have one too.
Genesis 2:7, in every translation this tool compares.
Not a soul in sight. You mean not a person. English still has the wider sense and keeps it in fixed phrases only.
Because it is the standard proof text word for the human soul, and the same noun is used of fish and birds four times in Genesis 1.
Versions read soul, life, person, being, or appetite depending on the verse.
נֶפֶשׁ nephesh · H5315
Nephesh covers the throat, appetite, life, the self, and the person. It is what a creature is rather than a part a creature has, and it is used of animals from Genesis 1:20 onward.
English soul carries a Greek and later Christian anthropology that Hebrew usage does not require.
When one Hebrew word is rendered six different ways in one English Bible, the range is the fact and the individual renderings are guesses at context.
Soul and life are the majority renderings; being and creature are increasingly common in modern versions.
- nephesh of animals: Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 30
- nephesh as throat or appetite: Isaiah 5:14; Proverbs 23:2
- Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, on nephesh
