Consider also Jesus’ words: “I am the fine shepherd the fine shepherd surrenders his life in behalf of the sheep.” ( John 10:11) Jesus gave his soul, or life, in behalf of mankind. ” ( Genesis 35:16-19) At that time, Rachel lost her life. Earlier, while Rachel was giving birth to her son Benjamin, “her life was slipping away. Jehovah told Moses: “All the men who were seeking to kill you are dead.” ( Exodus 4:19) What were Moses’ enemies trying to do? They were seeking to take Moses’ life. Sometimes the word “soul” means the life of a person. In the Bible’s creation account, we read: “Then God said: ‘Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ Then God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.’ And it was so.” ( Genesis 1:20, 24) In this passage, fish, domestic animals, and wild animals are all referred to by the same word-“souls.” Birds and other animals are called souls in the footnotes found at Genesis 9:10 Leviticus 11:46 and Numbers 31:28. Some other Biblical examples of the application of “soul” or “souls” to a person or to people are in the footnotes found at Genesis 46:18 Joshua 11:11 Acts 27:37 and Romans 13:1.Īnimals. So the amount of manna that was gathered was based on the number of people in each family. They were told to gather it “according to the number of the people ” that each of them had in his tent.
Exodus 16:16 mentions instructions given to the Israelites regarding the gathering of manna. a few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water.” ( 1 Peter 3:20) Here the word “souls” clearly stands for people-Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives. Let us consider some scriptures that present these three different senses. When you examine the way “soul” or “souls” is used in the Bible, it becomes evident that this word basically refers to (1) people, (2) animals, or (3) the life that a person or an animal has. These two words occur well over 800 times in the Scriptures, and the New World Translation renders them “soul,” either in the main text or in footnotes. When writing about the soul, the Bible writers used the Hebrew word neʹphesh or the Greek word psy You may remember that the Bible was originally written mainly in Hebrew and Greek.