I am informed by a minister of the Gospel that the Hebrew word muwth, as transliterated by Strong, rendered die in the expression, "Thou shalt surely die," means physical death. Will you please give the best translation of the Hebrew in this text?
P. We have no fault to find with the translations of the common English versions, both King James and the Revised Versions, of "Thou shalt surely die." The claim that it refers to physical death is based on the theory, which the Bible does not sustain, that man is composed of two entities, the physical man and the spiritual man, and that the soul-man is able to exist apart from the body. Such a doctrine does not have support in the Scriptures of truth. God is dealing with the man as the whole man. It was the whole man that sinned, the whole man who was to die; dissolution was to take place. It may be of worth to refer to Eze. 18: 4 where the same word is used, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," and again repeated in the 20th verse. So God pleads with Israel to turn from their sins in order that they might live, and asks them, "Why will ye die, O house of Israel?" Eze. 18: 31. Certainly, no mere dissolution of the body, but the death of the entire being, is referred to in this passage. It seems a strange thing to us that men will declare that the "thou" of Gen. 2: 17 refers to the body, while the "thou" of Luke 23: 43 refers to the soul. It is by such theological gymnastics that the immortal-soul theory is maintained. God spoke to the whole man Adam when He told him that he would surely die if he sinned, and Jesus spoke to the whole man dying by Him on the cross that some day he would be with Him in Paradise.