H5315

• {"n":"Genesis 2:7b","s":"Man became a living soul. The same phrase is used of the animals.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-2-7b","r":"Genesis 2:7","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"The King James reads a living soul here and a living creature at Genesis 1:24 for the same two words. Modern versions read living being or living creature in both places, which is the correction."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**She is a living creature.** That is a statement about being alive, not about having an invisible part. Now imagine your translation used a more spiritual-sounding word in one place and a plainer one somewhere else, for the same original phrase."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Nephesh chayyah. The phrase appears at Genesis 1:20, 21, 24 and 30 of sea creatures, birds and land animals. Nephesh is closer to a life, a self, an appetite, even a throat, than to an immaterial soul. The verse says the man became alive, not that he received a soul the animals lack."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English soul carries centuries of Greek and Christian anthropology that Hebrew nephesh does not. There is no neutral English word, and creature sounds dismissive where soul sounds elevated."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When one Hebrew phrase is rendered two different ways in the same book, look up the other occurrences. Translators sometimes signal a theology by their choice of English word, and the King James does it here."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"No Hebrew dispute. Modern versions have standardised on living being, and the King James rendering is the one that produced the popular reading."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e0\u05b6\u05e4\u05b6\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d7\u05b7\u05d9\u05b8\u05bc\u05d4 nephesh chayyah \u00b7 H5315 + H2416"}],"src":["The identical phrase at 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"]}
• {"n":"Genesis 9:4","s":"Flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. Life and blood are named with the same word, nephesh.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-9-4","r":"Genesis 9:4","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads some form of flesh with the life, which is the blood, correctly, though the repetition of nephesh for both life and, by implication, the animal's very self is not obviously visible in English's two separate words, life and blood."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English keeps **blood** and **life** as separate ideas connected only by biology class. This verse states outright, in one Hebrew word doing both jobs, that the blood simply is the life, not a symbol of it or a carrier of it, but the thing itself."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Nephesh, the same word behind a living soul at Genesis 2:7 and the living creatures of chapter 1, is used here to identify the blood directly: basar benaphsho damo, flesh with its life, its blood. The equation, blood is nephesh, becomes the basis for Israel's later dietary law and sacrificial system, restated explicitly at Leviticus 17:11, the life of the flesh is in the blood."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English requires two separate words, life and blood, connected by a verb, to say what Hebrew says by using one word, nephesh, for both. The tight equation Hebrew makes directly, blood is nephesh, becomes in English a looser statement about one thing being associated with another."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a text says X is Y using the same underlying word for both sides of the sentence, treat the equation as stronger than an English translation using two different vocabulary words will suggest. Nephesh here is not merely near blood; the text names them with one word."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Every version agrees on the basic sense, that blood represents or carries life. The stronger reading, that nephesh here identifies rather than merely associates blood with life, is a matter of how tightly the single Hebrew word is allowed to bind the two ideas together."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e0\u05b6\u05e4\u05b6\u05e9\u05c1 nephesh \u00b7 H5315"}],"src":["The same equation restated: Leviticus 17:11, 'the life of the flesh is in the blood'","nephesh chayyah at Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 1:20-30"]}
• {"n":"Genesis 44:30","s":"His life is bound up in the lad's life. Nephesh, the same word as living soul, used twice, bound together.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-44-30","r":"Genesis 44:30","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads his life is bound up in the lad's life, correctly, but the repetition of the same underlying Hebrew word, nephesh, for both father and son is smoothed into a single English word, life, used generically rather than as the loaded term it is throughout the rest of Genesis."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English keeps **life** fairly abstract, a general condition rather than a tangible thing you could tie to something. Hebrew nephesh is closer to a person's whole self or throat, concrete enough that describing two nephashot as bound, keshurah, together pictures an actual physical or emotional cord, not merely a sentiment."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Nafsho keshurah b'nafsho, his nephesh is bound in his nephesh, repeats the word already met as the breath of life at 2:7 and living soul throughout chapter 1, now applied twice in one clause to describe Jacob's and Benjamin's selves as tied together, not merely emotionally attached in the abstract sense English life suggests, but bound, a term elsewhere used of physical tying and knotting."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English life is a broad, somewhat abstract noun; nephesh carries a more concrete, almost tangible sense of self or living being throughout Genesis, so describing two nephashot as tied or bound together lands with more physical force in Hebrew than his life is bound up in his life does in ordinary English."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When nephesh recurs at an emotionally weighted moment late in a book, read it against its earlier, more concrete uses, breath, living soul, throat, appetite, rather than assuming it has quietly become the abstract English word life. The word's physical undertone rarely disappears."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Every version lands on the same basic sense, deep attachment. What's easy to lose is nephesh's more concrete, physical undertone, given how loaded the word has already become across chapters 1, 2, and 9 of the same book."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e0\u05b6\u05e4\u05b6\u05e9\u05c1 \u05e7\u05b0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05bc\u05e8\u05b8\u05d4 nephesh keshurah \u00b7 H5315 + H7194"}],"src":["keshurah, bound or tied, used of physical binding elsewhere: e.g. Job 38:31","nephesh's earlier concrete range: Genesis 1:20-30; 2:7; 9:4"]}
• {"n":"Psalm 105:18","s":"The iron entered into his soul. The Hebrew more literally reads his soul came into iron, a difficult phrase ancient translators handled differently.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-105-18","r":"Psalm 105:18","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most versions read some form of describing Joseph's affliction in prison, his feet hurt with fetters, his neck or person constrained by iron, with varying degrees of literalness about the famous his soul entered iron phrase."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English the iron entered into his soul is now a familiar idiom for deep inner anguish, but it is also a slightly unusual translation choice: the Hebrew word order more literally has his soul entering iron, not the other way around, a small but real difference ancient translators noticed and handled in at least three different ways."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"The Hebrew reads nephesh, soul, life, or person, as entering into iron, backward from the more intuitive image of iron entering a person. The Syriac keeps this direction, his soul went into iron; the Aramaic Targum reverses it, the chain of iron went into his soul; the widely beloved English phrase, the iron entered into his soul, popularized through the Book of Common Prayer, follows the Targum's reversed direction rather than the more literal Hebrew word order."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English readers who know the phrase the iron entered into his soul as a beautiful, familiar idiom for suffering may not realize the phrase's exact grammatical direction was already being debated and reversed by ancient translators, since the literal Hebrew has the person entering the iron, not the iron entering the person."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a beloved, idiomatic English Bible phrase sounds too poetically perfect to be a plain translation, check its actual grammatical direction against the Hebrew. Some of the most famous English biblical phrases, like this one, already represent an ancient interpretive choice rather than a purely literal rendering."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"His soul entered into iron, closer to the literal Hebrew word order, pictures Joseph's whole self being absorbed into confinement. The iron entered into his soul, the beloved reversed idiom following the Targum, pictures suffering piercing inward instead, the version that became proverbial in English despite reversing the Hebrew's own direction."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d1\u05b7\u05bc\u05e8\u05b0\u05d6\u05b6\u05dc \u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0\u05b8\u05d4 \u05e0\u05b7\u05e4\u05b0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05b9 barzel ba'ah naphsho (his soul came into iron) \u00b7 H1270 + H935 + H5315"}],"src":["Syriac Peshitta keeping the Hebrew's direction, 'his soul went into iron'","Aramaic Targum reversing it, 'the chain of iron went into his soul'","The Book of Common Prayer popularizing the reversed English idiom"]}