Untitled article by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, December 31, 1867

Are the Dead Conscious? No. 2.

By Editor

Gen. xxxv, 18. And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died,) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin.

As this scripture speaks of the soul's departing, it is seized upon with avidity by believers in the conscious state of the dead, as proof that the soul is a separate entity and can exist in a disembodied state, as it is something which departed when the person died. For instance, Luther Lee remarks upon this passage:— “Her body did not depart. Her brains did not depart. There was nothing which departed which could consistently be called her soul; only upon the supposition that there is in man an immaterial spirit, which leaves the body at death.” In reply, the reader needs not to be reminded that neh-phesh, the word here used for soul, signifies something else besides brain and body. For our part, we much prefer the exposition of Parkhurst, that neh-phesh may here signify the breath. And such an idea is in the strictest accordance with reason and matter of fact; thus, it came to pass as her breath was departing (or, as the breath of life was leaving her); for she died, &c. Compare this with Gen. i, 20, 30, margin.

In these latter references, the same word, neh-phesh, is used to denote that which is possessed in common by the fish and living creatures in the sea, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air. In the one case the margin says, “soul,” and in the other, “a living soul.” The last writer in the Bible, uses soul in the same sense, and says that under the second of the seven last plagues, “every living soul died in the sea.” The word here used for soul, is the word which answers to neh-phesh of the Old Testament; and if it proves an immortal soul for the human race, it proves the same for the lower orders of animals. It is the breath of life which gives and sustains life. Gen. ii, 7; vii, 22. And when this breath of life departs, death is the result.—Ed.