Properly, a breathing creature , i.e. animal of (abstractly) vitality ; used very widely in a literal, accommodated or figurative sense (bodily or mental)
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נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) is a broad Hebrew noun for a living creature, a person or self, life, desire or appetite, and in some settings the throat or neck. Genesis 1 uses nephesh for living creatures in the waters and on land.
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Full entry for נֶפֶשׁ (H5315) · Open the biblical lexicon
נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) is a broad Hebrew noun for a living creature, a person or self, life, desire or appetite, and in some settings the throat or neck. Genesis 1 uses nephesh for living creatures in the waters and on land.
The BSB source-word alignment has 754 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include my soul (62), . . . (59), my life (28), his life (24), your life (22).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:20. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (144), Jeremiah (62), Leviticus (60), Proverbs (56).
נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) is a broad Hebrew noun for a living creature, a person or self, life, desire or appetite, and in some settings the throat or neck. Genesis 1 uses nephesh for living creatures in the waters and on land. Genesis 2:7 says the human formed from dust and animated by God's breath became a living nephesh. The word can therefore refer to the whole living being rather than naming only an invisible component located inside a body. At the same time, no single occurrence by itself supplies a complete biblical anthropology.
Because nephesh can mean life, it appears in texts about blood and mortality. Genesis 9:4 links flesh with its life and blood, and Leviticus 17:11 says the nephesh of the flesh is in the blood within its sacrificial explanation. Ezekiel 18:4 says all lives or persons belong to God and that the nephesh who sins will die, emphasizing individual moral accountability in the chapter. These texts do not reduce a person to blood, deny hope beyond death, or permit a complete doctrine of resurrection to be drawn from one Hebrew noun.
Nephesh also expresses personal devotion and desire. Deuteronomy 6:5 calls Israel to love the Lord with all heart, all nephesh, and all might, language of comprehensive allegiance rather than a technical division into three human parts. In Psalm 42:1 the psalmist's nephesh longs for God, and in Psalm 103:1 the speaker addresses the nephesh in a summons to bless the Lord. Isaiah 53:10 and 12 use the servant's nephesh in relation to the guilt offering and the pouring out of his life to death. Across these uses, translations such as soul, self, life, person, being, or appetite must be chosen from context.
Nephesh ranges across living creatures, whole persons, life exposed to death, the self addressed in prayer, and embodied desire. The range resists a single English equivalent and calls for passage-level translation.
The creation account calls the swarming water creatures living nephesh, showing that the noun is not restricted to humans.
The earth-formed human receives the breath of life and becomes a living nephesh.
The prohibition against eating flesh with its life and blood uses nephesh in an embodied life context.
Within sacrificial instruction, the life of the flesh is associated with blood given on the altar to make atonement.
Israel must love the Lord with the whole nephesh as part of comprehensive covenant devotion.
The psalmist's nephesh thirsts for God, giving voice to personal longing through an embodied image.
The psalmist summons his own nephesh and all within him to bless the Lord.
The servant pours out his nephesh to death, so life or self is foregrounded within representative suffering.
God claims every nephesh and announces accountability for the person who sins within an argument against inherited blame.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Vitality or lifeforce of a creature; ranges from physical breath to desire, appetite, and personal identity or selfhood.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 757 lexical occurrence verses.
נֶפֶשׁ is built from this root:
The proverb emphasizes that the effects of kindness return to the whole person. Proverbs 11:17
Greek words that correspond to or develop the meaning of this Hebrew word in the New Testament.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Nephesh gives teachers a richly embodied vocabulary for creaturely life before God. Genesis does not describe the first human as receiving a nephesh like an added object; the human becomes a living nephesh through formed dust and divine breath. Animals are also called living nephesh, which encourages humility about shared creatureliness without erasing humanity's image-bearing calling.
Deuteronomy 6 directs the whole life toward love of God, while Psalms 42 and 103 show the self longing for God and summoning itself to praise. Leviticus 17 locates life and blood within a sacrificial context that deserves careful handling, and Ezekiel 18 stresses personal accountability rather than inherited blame. A sermon should let translation follow context and avoid using soul language either to despise the body or to deny Scripture's teaching about death, resurrection, and continuing personal identity.
Gen.2.7
Depending on context, nephesh may be rendered creature, person, self, life, soul, appetite, desire, throat, or neck. Translation should follow the local usage rather than impose one philosophical definition on all 757 occurrences.
The Greek Bible and New Testament often use psychē for Hebrew nephesh contexts, and New Testament passages can use that term for life, self, or soul. Those connections are real but context-sensitive. Christian anthropology and resurrection hope must be built from creation, death, Christ's resurrection, and the promised resurrection of persons as a whole canonical account.
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