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NASB | 1 Samuel 2:35 'But I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My soul; and I will build him an enduring house, and he will walk before My anointed always. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 1 Samuel 2:35 'But I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My soul; and I will build him a permanent and enduring house, and he will walk before My anointed forever. [1 Sam 2:10] |
Subject: God's "Mind" or "Soul" in 1 Sam 2:25? |
Bible Note: Makarios, you always kick it into high gear. I like your analysis tremendously. I agree that God's "soul" is a conundrum: insofar as we are in His image and thus have been given aspects of His being, our "soul" may be akin to that aspect of Himself which He has breathed into us, though I don't know any scripture to help conclude the matter. Perhaps the problem lies with us, with our narrow comprehension of "soul" as understood by the OT Hebrews. I heard it said somewhere that ancient man (Pre-Greek,let's say), did not think of himself as composed of parts -- body, mind, spirit, soul, emotion -- but as a unity, and that not until the Greeks do we see man thinking of himself as a composition of tangible and intangible elements -- body, will, mind, emotion, something of the divine -- and all of it expressed in the family catastrophe of the Pantheon (and Sigmund Freud). This ancient unified man view is totally belied by the Psalms, where we have David crying out from more parts of his being than you can shake a stick at ("Thou hast possessed my reins"); so the difficulty seems to lie more in our contemporary understanding of "soul" as something in us which continues to live though we die. Therein is the rub: why would God have a soul when He's eternal? In this regard I think your answer that "His 'soul' can only be defined in terms of the Holy Spirit" is spot on, especially in context of our contemporary understanding of soul. But perhaps we need to struggle backwards and conceive what "soul" could possibly have meant to the sons of Abraham. Was it something we can never fully grasp (like the Greek "Logos" in John 1.1)? Notice how the word "Heart" precedes "Soul" in 1 Sam 2.35, indicating that we might begin by subtracting what we understand as heart (the seat of emotion, desire, love), from the meaning of "soul" since they are clearly distinguished in context. We are left, perhaps, with "mind", "will" "Spirit", or an inscrutible amalgam of all three. Great! I'm stumped. How 'bout you? I'd sure like to know what the writer of 2 Sam felt when God breathed that word into his brainpan. I agree with you, by the way, the NASB definitely scores on this one. I also really enjoy this kind of brain-cracking study. Thanks, Makarios. Steve P. sent me the Scott Hahn Romans 9-11 study, by the way. Absolutely out-of-sight, don't you think? Colin |