StrongerBible

neshamah

נְשָׁמָה

HebrewH5397“breath, spirit, ...”

Appears 24 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 2:7Gen 7:22Deu 20:16Jos 10:40Jos 11:11Jos 11:142Sa 22:161Ki 15:291Ki 17:17Job 4:9Job 26:4Job 27:3Job 32:8Job 33:4Job 34:14Job 37:10Psa 18:15(16)Psa 150:6Pro 20:27Isa 2:22Isa 30:33Isa 42:5Isa 57:16Dan 10:17
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeneh-shah-MAHnoun

What neshamah means

breath: the air a living body draws in and out, understood as God's own breath given on loan, whose presence is life and whose departure is death

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is the plainest of the Hebrew words for breath, spirit, and soul, and that plainness is the point. It names the literal air moving through a creature's nostrils, the simple sign that it is alive. When the breath stops, the body is dead.

What sets this word apart from its near neighbors is not a different meaning but a steady theological pull. Again and again the breath is God's: it is the air God blew into the first human at creation, the gift God can withdraw to end any life, and even the storm-blast that comes out of God's own nostrils to destroy. So the same word covers:

  • the gentle breath that proves a person is breathing
  • the comprehensive total of every creature that breathes
  • the violent exhalation of God in judgment

In a few wisdom passages the word reaches further inward. There the God-given breath is what gives a person understanding and even searches the hidden places of the heart, edging toward what later writers would call conscience. This stretch toward the inner life is real but uneven; it never becomes a separate, immortal soul living apart from the body. Throughout, a human being does not so much have this breath as live by it, on loan from the One who gives it.

Nuances

1abreath as the diagnostic mark of life: its presence shows a body is alive, its absence shows death
1Ki 17:17Isa 2:22Dan 10:17
1bin the phrase "everything that breathes": a sweeping total of all breathing creatures, people and animals alike
Deu 20:16Jos 10:40Jos 11:11Jos 11:141Ki 15:29Psa 150:6
1cGod's own breath as a destroying or weather-making blast
2Sa 22:16Job 4:9Job 37:10Psa 18:15(16)Isa 30:33
1dthe life-breath God breathes into a creature at creation, and can gather back to end its life
Gen 2:7Gen 7:22Job 27:3Job 33:4Job 34:14Isa 42:5Isa 57:16
1eGod's breath in a person as the source of understanding and inner moral light
Job 26:4Job 32:8Pro 20:27

Disputed

Whether this breath is reserved for human beings or also given to animals.

  • minorityThe word is essentially human: God breathes it only into the first man, not into the animals, marking human uniqueness.; N. M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS, 1989), 17
  • majorityA strong preference toward humans, but not a rule: the flood account, the total "everything that breathes," and the close of the Psalter all extend the word to animals as well.; V. P. Hamilton, Genesis 1-17 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1990), 159; C. Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Continental; Fortress, 1984), 206-207

What scholars say about neshamah

The standard lexicons (BDB, HALOT, DCH, Gesenius18) and the major theological dictionaries (TDOT, TLOT, NIDOTTE) treat נְשָׁמָה as a single noun meaning "breath" with a tight theological link to divine creation, dividing its 24 occurrences into roughly five overlapping uses: physiological breath as the mark of life (1 Kgs 17:17; Dan 10:17), the totalizing idiom כָּל נְשָׁמָה for all breathing creatures (Deut 20:16; Josh 10:40; 11:11, 14; Ps 150:6), God's destructive or meteorological breath (2 Sam 22:16; Job 4:9; 37:10; Isa 30:33), the creative inbreathing that animates the human (Gen 2:7 and its echoes in Job 27:3; 33:4; 34:14; Isa 42:5; 57:16), and the noetic-moral sense of divine illumination in the wisdom texts (Job 32:8; Prov 20:27). The root נשׁם appears as a finite verb only at Isa 42:14 ("I will gasp and pant"), preserving a forceful primary sense that the noun has generalized to "any breath"; TDOT (Lamberty-Zielinski) builds on this, and TLOT (Albertz-Westermann) uses it to demolish Snaith's old distinction that רוּחַ is forceful and נְשָׁמָה gentle. The OT anthropologies (Wolff, Barr, Di Vito, Janowski) read נְשָׁמָה as the divinely given respiration whose presence equals life, not a separable soul, and warn against importing later Greek or kabbalistic soul concepts: the man of Gen 2:7 becomes a נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה rather than receiving an immortal element, and the five-level NaRaNHaY soul stems from Bereshit Rabbah 14:9 through the Zohar and Luria, post-biblical reception history. Comparatively, נשׁם has regular West Semitic cognates (Aramaic/Syriac נשׁם, Arabic nasama/nasīm, Mandaic, Modern South Arabian) and Biblical Aramaic preserves the cognate noun at Dan 5:23; Akkadian napāšu/napištu is the cognate of נֶפֶשׁ, not of this root. The Septuagint renders it πνοή, reserving πνεῦμα for רוּחַ and ψυχή for נֶפֶשׁ.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, p. 675, s.v. נְשָׁמָהlexicon
  • HALOT (Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. נשׁם, נְשָׁמָהlexicon
  • DCH vol. 5 (Sheffield, 2001), s.v. נְשָׁמָהlexicon
  • H. Lamberty-Zielinski, "נָשַׁם / נְשָׁמָה," TDOT X (Eerdmans, 1999), 65-70theological-dictionary
  • R. Albertz & C. Westermann, "רוּחַ," TLOT III (Hendrickson, 1997), 1202-1220theological-dictionary
  • M. V. Van Pelt, W. C. Kaiser Jr., D. I. Block, "רוּחַ," NIDOTTE 3 (Zondervan, 1997), 1073-1078theological-dictionary
  • H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Fortress, 1974)monograph
  • J. Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Fortress, 1992), 36-42monograph
  • G. J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1; Word, 1987), 60-61commentary
  • N. M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS, 1989), 17commentary
  • V. P. Hamilton, Genesis 1-17 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1990), 159commentary
  • D. J. A. Clines, Job 21-37 (WBC 18A; Nelson, 2006), 717-719, 728-730, 770-771commentary
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (AB 18B; Yale, 2009), 678-680commentary
  • B. K. Waltke, Proverbs 15-31 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2005), 158-162commentary
  • A. Militarev & L. Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary I (Ugarit-Verlag, 2000)monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of נְשָׁמָה

f s construct

נִשְׁמַת, נִּשְׁמַת

Gen 2:7, Gen 7:22, Job 26:4, Job 32:8, Job 33:4, Pro 20:27, Isa 30:33, 2Sa 22:16

f s absolute

נְשָׁמָה, נְּשָׁמָה

Deu 20:16, Jos 11:11, Jos 11:14, 1Ki 15:29, 1Ki 17:17, Isa 2:22, Isa 42:5, Dan 10:17

f p absolute

נְשָׁמוֹת

Isa 57:16

f s construct

נִשְׁמָתִי

Job 27:3

f s construct

נִשְׁמָתוֹ

Job 34:14