![]() Even if there is only a small chance the life will be saved. Because of that the Jewish people do everything they can to preserve life. Jewish tradition teaches that all life is precious and only God has the power to determine when a life begins and ends. Judaism places a huge emphasis on the sanctity of life. “If your soul is filled with cares, pleasures, the love of riches, or the desires of this world… You’ll be full and actually despise the sweet honeycomb of God’s fellowship.” Proverbs 27:7 says, “A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb.” John Bevere interprets this verse very clearly: Thus our entire life, our very being is moving towards that. The use of nephesh as desire and passion is worth noting because where we set our attention to, there our heart will be. “You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets-for he is poor and sets his heart (nephesh) on it-so that he does not cry out against you to the Lord, and it becomes a sin in you.”(Deuteronomy 24:15) Linked to the heart of a person, it is the force that drives one in a specific direction. The other distinct element of nephesh is the immaterial aspect, where we see nephesh translated as desire, passion or lust. The offering of a physical life of an animal covered for the life of a person. This meaning connects to the critical part of the sacrificial system in the Hebrew Bible, which was animal sacrifice. Like we see in Genesis 3:19, for dust you are and unto dust shall you return. We exist to serve Him.”įirst, nephesh is the “measurable life” – a life that can be counted, physically touched and measured. As pastor Craig Groeschel said, “God doesn’t exist to serve us. It means to love Him in everything we do, in every word we speak, in every minute of every day. And when we do – when we love God with all of who we are and with everything we’ve got – we bear witness to others! This means we should love God with all our life and for all our life. Have you ever considered that, just like the sky, your life should send this same message to the world? Your life-your words and your actions-are actually supposed to reveal God to the people around you! In Psalm 19, David wrote: “How clearly the sky reveals God’s glory… no speech or words are used, no sound is heard Yet their message goes out to all the world and is heard to the ends of the earth”. This is a love that takes over everything! It is a love expressed with “the whole of the affections of the heart, with great fervency and ardour of spirit, in the sincerity of the soul, and with all the strength of grace a man has, with such love that is as strong as death.” (Exposition of the Entire Bible by John Gill) Nephesh that Brings Revelation Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is within you. The New Testament reiterates this commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (nephesh) and with all your might. This understanding comes into focus when we examine Deuteronomy 6:5, the first and chief commandment given to the children of Israel: And it speaks of the very essence of a person. What does that tell us? We get the sense that nephesh is the inner, living being of a man. In the Bible, n ephesh is also translated into English as: living being, life, creature, mind, desires, heart, appetite, persons. This is why the original Hebrew does not talk about ‘the first day’ but rather the period of time from one evening to the next evening and that is called ONE DAY (‘Yom Echad’).As we notice the other uses of nephesh, the picture becomes a little clearer. In other words, now when ‘God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night’ appeared in the ‘first day of Creation’ it is in fact the invention of the CONCEPT of a DAY. Now, the Bible uses the Hebrew phrase ‘Yom Echad’ or ‘one day’ in English – for a reason, and that reason is with the intent of marking the first period of time which was called ‘a day.’ The original Hebrew phrase for ‘and there was evening and there was morning, the first day’ is ‘Va-Ye’ee Erev Va-Ye’ee Voker Yom Echad.’ (which is also Hebrew for ‘Sunday’) and ‘Yom Echad’ actually means in English ‘ONE day.’ It means that FRIDAY evening is the beginning of the Jewish Sabbat and it lasts through to the next day, which is Saturday, up until the next evening so what is known in English as ‘Saturday night’ is in fact already SUNDAY according to the Jewish calendar. This biblical verse is the source for the Jewish custom of starting the day from the evening before, as we know from Shabbat, for example. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Genesis 1:5) ![]() ![]() “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. ![]() The first day of the Creation ends with the following words:
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