Soul of Fire: A Theory of Biblical Man

By Ethan Dor-Shav

Our common fate as water, earth, wind, and fire.

The second level of our being is that of nefesh, the part of us related to water. Water itself, of course, stands for life. This is why, in the Bible, flowing waters are considered “alive”—mayim hayim,⁴⁹ and why Ecclesiastes chose running streams to signify the element. That nefesh, too, stands for life (or the flowing “life force”) is evident in over sixty biblical references.⁵⁰ In ancient Israelite thought, “life” means animation, the capacity for independent movement, and is therefore a term reserved for animals. Contrary both to Western languages and to the customary scientific usage, the Bible never applies to plants the Hebrew term for life, hai; likewise, there is no such thing as a “dead” plant.

Nefesh, then, is not a uniquely human soul, as some translations imply, but one that humans share with animals from insects to primates. Fitting its appropriate Latin translation, anima, the term captures the layer of creation as defined on its fifth day: “God said, Let the Water bring forth abundantly—nefesh creatures that have life, and God created every crawling nefesh that has life.”⁵¹ That all animals are possessed of a nefesh too we also learn from Leviticus: “He that kills a human nefesh shall surely be put to death. And he that kills a beast nefesh shall repay it.”⁵² The Bible tells us the relation of nefesh not only to animal life, but also to life’s opposite. Nefesh is the only term used in reference to death. While the body may wither, it is the nefesh itself that dies, as Samson declares, “Let my nefesh die with the Philistines.”⁵³ When the body stills, life runs out.

How do we know that nefesh is related to water? First, as mentioned, both connote life. In addition, unlike the other two biblical soul-terms, nefesh is always described as liquid: “He poured out his nefesh to death”;⁵⁴ “My nefesh leaks away for sorrow”;⁵⁵ “our nefesh dried away”;⁵⁶ “I poured out my nefesh before the Lord,” and more.⁵⁷ The prophet Samuel brings the point home: “For we all must die,” he teaches, “[indeed] as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again—God does not spare any nefesh.”⁵⁸

The most important connection between nefesh and the ever-flowing element of water, however, is its association with blood. Alluding to the pumping, animated bloodflow that runs in our veins (and not to chemical attributes), Leviticus teaches: “For the nefesh of the body is in the blood.” Deuteronomy reiterates the same idea, “For the blood is the nefesh... pour it on the earth like water,” and Ezekiel famously exclaims “In your blood, live!”⁵⁹

On the other hand, the alleged connection between nefesh and breath has no basis at all in biblical texts, and stems solely from superimposing Hindu,⁶⁰ and perhaps ancient Greek,⁶¹ ideas of breath as the all-encompassing-force-of-life upon the Hebrew Bible.

Finally, the connection between nefesh and water explains the Bible’s underworld, Sheol. Few people realize that the biblical Sheol is devoid of fire and brimstone. It is not scorching, but cold, and its dwellers do not agonize but float in sleep.⁶² At the bottom of the Bible’s cosmic order, Sheol is in fact a dark water-world, submerged in the abyss called tehom, where “the refaim swirl under the waters.”⁶³ When plunged into the sea, Jonah could therefore say: “out of the belly of Sheol I cried… For you cast me into the tehom.”⁶⁴ And the same parallel is explicit in Ezekiel: “On the day when it went down to Sheol I caused lamentations; I closed the tehom over it, and held back its rivers, and its many waters were stopped up.”⁶⁵ Likewise, “the waves of death encompassed me, the rivers of perdition assailed me; the pangs of Sheol encompassed me.”⁶⁶ Hence the dead descend to the underworld through water-wells, called bor, that reach below the entire plate of the Earth: “You shall be brought down to Sheol, to the farther reaches of the bor.”⁶⁷

Remarkably, the biblical netherworld has nothing to do with punishment; each of us, not only sinners, reaches Sheol. Ecclesiastes urges every reader to embrace life, because “there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are headed.”⁶⁸ Likewise, Jacob lamented the presumed loss of Joseph’s life by saying, “I will go down into Sheol, unto my son.”⁶⁹ Though both were righteous, they were destined for the underworld—the primal, collective reservoir of life.

As Ecclesiastes underscores, it is the nature of water to flow, but just as importantly it is the nature of water to flow downward. Thus our own blood flow, our innate water-element, runs down to an underworld after death: “Let the wicked dry out; let them bleed to Sheol.”⁷⁰ Sheol makes sixty-five appearances in the Bible, a third of which make an explicit link to nefesh and blood. No other soul-term is ever used in this context. When the Bible talks of the Earth covering the blood of the dead it is referring not to a heap of soil, but to the entire Earth realm. So just as our material body returns to the Earth, dust to dust, our nefesh life force returns to the tehom, blood to blood.⁷¹

In summary, the animation of nefesh defines a separate level or reality, above and beyond the growth of earthbound flora.⁷² Together with the ability to carry ourselves from place to place, it represents sensation, cognitive processes, and instinctive drives. For the Bible, rivers are the veins and arteries of the earth, just as our own blood flows in the veins and arteries of our bodies. As Water is the natural force of animation that impels all life, so our nefesh, tied to water, is our personal share in animation and life.

The third level of what makes us human is ruah—literally Wind, which emanates from an intermediary realm between Heaven and Earth. Like nefesh, ruah is not unique to humans. In Psalm 104, the statement “You take away their ruah, they die” refers to “living things both small and great.”⁷³ Ecclesiastes declares: “They have all one ruah; so that man has no pre-eminence above the beast.”⁷⁴ In the story of the flood, the animals enter the ark “two by two, of all flesh in which is a ruah.”⁷⁵ Ruah is, however, restricted to animals that breathe with lungs—the only ones endangered by the flood.⁷⁶ Fish and bugs have no share in ruah, but in varying degrees reptiles, birds, and mammals do. If our bones make us relatives to every growing tree, and our nefesh makes us relatives to all animated life forms, ruah makes us closer relatives to higher animals, from iguanas (however borderline), to dolphins, to chimpanzees.

What separates breathing and non-breathing animals on such a fundamental level? The answer lies in the notion of “social self.” Ruah, translated as spirit, is a subject not for divinity school, but for a department of social sciences, for ruah accounts for all social relationships and inter-subjective dealings. Lower animals may live in societies, but lacking hierarchy they fail to acquire individual, social identities. Bees, for instance, assume their roles solely according to their age, while dogs gain their position in the pack through merit. As a rule of thumb, lower animals, even fish, cannot recognize individual counterparts, while reptiles,⁷⁷ birds, and mammals can.⁷⁸ That the Bible appreciates inter-subjective relations in higher animals—particularly mother-child empathy—is evident from different decrees, including: “You shall not kill it and its young both in one day,”⁷⁹ and “If a bird’s nest happens to be before you… you shall not take the mother with the young.”⁸⁰ No comparable sensitivity pertains to fish.

It is no coincidence, then, that ruah makes its real debut in the Garden of Eden, where God appears “amidst the ruah of day.”⁸¹ Only here, as God declared, “it is not good that man shall be alone,”⁸² did Adam and Eve form the first social unit. And feeling themselves nude, they clothed themselves–the archetypical social convention. Similar examples regarding the social nature of ruah abound elsewhere: of marital bonds, “And the ruah of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife”;⁸³ of the breaking thereof, “the Lord has called you a forsaken woman, grieved in ruah, as a wife of youth when rejected”;⁸⁴ of in-law tensions, in the case of Esau’s wives, “which were a grief of ruah unto Isaac and to Rebecca”;⁸⁵ of political alliance, “Then God sent a negative ruah between Abimelech and the men of Shechem”;⁸⁶ and finally, since nothing is more social by nature than treachery, the general rule: “Take heed to your ruah, that you do not betray.”⁸⁷ With ruah, then, society was born, granting each individual a social persona, on top of his or her organic and animal selves.

Together with social character, ruah is also responsible for dreams, partiality (likes and dislikes), play, and conscience. At its best, ruah strives for social greatness: power, leadership, and social justice. In Israelite thought, however, even the highest level of ruah, prophecy, serves a strictly social end. Isaiah makes the connection clear regarding the coming of the Messiah:

And the ruah of the Lord shall rest upon him, the ruah of wisdom and understanding, the ruah of counsel and might, the ruah of knowledge and the Fear of the Lord. And shall make him smell (va’hariho)⁸⁸ with [employing] Fear of the Lord: And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. But with righteousness shall he judge the poor… and with the ruah of his lips he shall slay the wicked.⁸⁹

Having an individual social persona also permits self-awareness, itself a determining function of ruah, exemplified by Adam and Eve first blushing after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. As anyone who has practiced meditation knows, awareness and consciousness are connected to breath. Unlike metabolic (earth) and circulatory (water) systems, we can consciously control respiration.

The easiest way to appreciate the apparatus of ruah is, appropriately, through its effect on the collective. Thus it can be felt sweeping over a sport stadium, soaring in music, or infecting a mob. In these situations, the power of ruah may run both ways—from a ruah-infused leader to the masses, or vice versa, from the accumulative spirit of the group to the leader. At the same time, in the Bible ruah never really becomes part of man; it is always called “the ruah of the Lord.” Here, for instance, is the description of Samson’s courage: “And the ruah of the Lord came mightily upon him and he tore the lion apart.”⁹⁰ This added “spirit” was a momentary gift, a burst of bravery, a feeling that he could achieve anything.