nephesh

Semantic range

1. 1the whole living creature, animals included
2. 2life itself; a person counted as a head
3. 3throat, appetite, desire — the concrete root sense

In Genesis 2:7 man does not receive a nephesh; he becomes one — "a living soul" (nephesh ḥayyāh), the identical phrase used of the animals in Genesis 1:20–24. Hebrew anthropology is stubbornly unitary. A person does not have a body and possess a soul; a person is a soul, an animated whole.

Later Christian thought, absorbing Greek dualism, came to treat the soul as an immaterial part imprisoned in a body. The Restoration reverses that drift explicitly: "the spirit and the body are the soul of man" (D&C 88:15), and the resurrection is not escape from the body but its permanent redemption (see 2 Nephi 9:13; Alma 11:43).

The concrete sense — throat, hence appetite — survives in verses like Psalm 42:1–2, where the panting deer and the thirsting nephesh are one image, not two.

Where it appears

• Genesis 2:7"Man became a living soul" — became, not received.
• Genesis 1:21The same phrase applied to sea creatures.
• Psalm 42:1–2The thirsting soul; the concrete sense showing through.

See also

• רוּחַrûaḥ
• ψυχήpsychē
• לֵבlēb / lēbāb