Scriptural Meaning of the Word Soul.
THE following additional instances we give of the use of the word soul in connection with death. Job 33:22. His soul draweth near unto the grave.
Job 36:14. They die in youth. Heb., their soul dieth, etc.
Ps. 7:2. Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces.
Ps. 22:20. Deliver my soul from the sword.
Verse 29. And none can keep alive his own soul.
Ps. 35:17. Rescue my soul from their destructions.
Ps. 78:50. He spared not their soul from death.
Ps. 116:8. For thou hast delivered my soul from death.
Ps. 119:175. Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee. Compare Ps. 115:17, and 6:5.
Prov. 28:17. A man that doeth violence to the blood of any person shall flee to the pit. Heb., to the blood of any soul.
Isa. 53:10. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.
Verse 12. He hath poured out his soul unto death. Compare Acts 2:31.
Jer. 2:34. In thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents.
Jer. 38:17. If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live.
Verse 20 the same.
Jer. 40:14. Dost thou certainly know that Baalis the king of the Ammonites hath sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to slay thee? Heb., to smite thy soul.
Verse 15. Wherefore should he slay thee? Heb., smite thy soul.
Eze. 13:19. To slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live.
Eze. 18:4. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Verse 20 the same.
Verse 27. He shall save his soul alive.
Eze. 22:27. To shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. The same method of expression is found in the New Testament. Jas. 5:20. He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death. And the New Testament also gives evidence that the soul expresses the selfhood or personality of the man or being to which it refers. Matt. 10:28. Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matt. 16:26. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul. Other texts the same. Note the parallel in the following passage.
Luke 9:25. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? The import of the many passages cited is unmistakable. They show that the soul is wearied, faints, hungers, eats and drinks, may be killed, and if incorrigibly sinful, shall die or be destroyed. So plain and harmonious is their testimony that it would seem that no one, having any reverence for the word of God, would ever make an effort to evade their force. It cannot be done by any just construction of the language; and yet the effort is constantly being made. The language is spiritualized, that is, it is made to mean something which it does not express. But to this process of accommodation, as it is called, we should never resort. We do not say that figures of speech, symbols, etc., should not be used or considered as such; but we do say that plain language, should never be construed to mean something which it does not say, unless in the nature of the subject, or from the context, it appears that the apparent meaning is not the true one. In this case no such reason exists. 1. We have the concessions of the ablest Bible critics, the best scholars, the most ardent believers in the immortality of the soul, that the word is used in reference to all creatures possessed of animal life, down to the very lowest grades. 2. There is no text in all the Bible which connects the two words, soul and immortality; that is, the Scriptures do not say or even intimate that the soul is immortal. 3. Death is the penalty of transgression, and penalties, even as laws, must be taken literally unless an explanation of some term gives to it a different signification. But in such case the explanation itself must be in terms clear and explicit. 4. Almost every word which language contains has been used in the Scriptures to express the utter destruction of the soul or being which falls under the curse of the divine law. 5. Not a single term or instance occurs by or in which the terms die, destroy, perish, etc., are shown to be modified when they are used in reference to the punishment of the soul, or the sinner. Such facts as these ought to have due weight in the consideration of the subject. In regard to the fact marked 4, above, inasmuch as the power and force of language is exhausted to express the utter destruction, or death, of the sinner, it is revealed as clearly as language can be made to express ideas. Were we to state it in our own language, with the purpose to make it as strong as we possibly could, we would know of no method of statement which we could adopt which is not found in the Bible. On the other side, every believer in the immortality of the soul must confess that, if it were his privilege to frame the testimony which should reveal the assumed fact that the soul is immortal, he could express it in many forms of language which the Bible does not contain. In the first place, we have no doubt, they would directly say, “The soul is immortal, and cannot die.” Such a statement in the Bible would be a great relief to the advocates of that doctrine. Any equivalent to such language would be accepted by us as a final settlement of the question. But when the Scriptures contain no such statement, and no statement from which such an idea may be justly or necessarily inferred, but do contain the statements, reiterated over and over, that the soul shall die, that it shall perish, that it shall be destroyed, we insist that those who have opposed the doctrine of the soul’s entire mortality ought to candidly accept the testimony, and cease to argue that the soul is immortal. That they do not yield to the force of these statements, but tenaciously hold on to a doctrine of which Plato, the pagan philosopher, is admitted to be the best exponent, causes us to believe that their belief in and reverence for the statements of the Bible are not so strong as they profess; perhaps not so strong as they themselves believe it to be. For it is a fact that people do not always understand the motives which influence their actions, or the reasons underlying their belief. The main point of dissent from this plain testimony of the Bible is on the definition of die, or death. On this we say it is just and reasonable that all terms in a law should be plain and explicit. In reference to this very point that great Christian reasoner, John Locke, said:— “It seems a strange way of understanding a law which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery. . . . I confess that by death, here, I can understand nothing but a ceasing to be, the losing of all actions of life and sense. Such a death came upon Adam and all his posterity, by his first disobedience in Paradise, under which death they should have lain forever had it not been for the redemption by Jesus Christ.”—Reasonableness of Christianity. And Dr. Taylor well said:— “Death was to be the consequence of his [Adam’s] disobedience, and the death here threatened can be opposed only to that life God gave Adam when he created him.” Webster gives the following as the definition of die:— “To pass from an animate to a lifeless state; to cease to live; to suffer a total and irreparable loss of action of the vital functions; to become dead; to decease; to expire. 2. To suffer death; to lose life. 3. To cease; to become lost or extinct.” And of death as follows:— “That state of being, animal or vegetable, but more particularly of an animal, in which there is total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions, when the organs have only ceased to act, had lost the susceptibility of renewed action; cessation of life; extinction of bodily life; decease; demise; departure; dissolution; exit. 2. Total privation or loss; extinction, as the death of memory.” In our next we will endeavor to point out further the necessity of giving these terms their obvious meaning, and to show that violence is done to the language and to the facts of Scripture in imagining unnecessary and so-called “theological meanings.”