And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she
called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin (Gen 35.18).
וַיְהִי בְּצֵאת נַפְשָׁהּ כִּי מֵתָה וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ בֶּן־אוֹנִי וְאָבִיו קָרָא־לוֹ בִנְיָמִ ין׃
My special interest in this text is the part that says, “as her soul was in departing, (for she died).” A little research uncovers that the Hebrew word for “soul” is nephesh (see above, שְׁמוֹ ). Much scholarly literature focuses attention on it. In this context, stricter translations render it “soul” (e.g., AV, ASV, ESV) or “life” (LEB), e.g., “when her life was departing.” Looser translations use “breath” and its cognates, paraphrasing slightly, e.g., “As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni,” etc. (NIV). Other interesting attempts to render the Hebrew include these: “Then as she was about to yeelde vp the Ghost (for she died)” (1560 Geneva; here “ghost” = “spirit”); “Rachel was at the point of death, and right before dying, she said” (CEV); “It happened as she was letting go of her soul, for she was dying” (LES).
The translator and interpreter faces two temptations at the extremes. The one of more theologically liberal bent is apt to despise the AV and prefer to understand these words as an ancient idiomatic expression for physical death, and nothing more. Someone within fundamentalism may seize upon this “departing soul at death” language to suggest that it implicitly contains a rather full-blown anthropology of the intermediate state (our experience between the death and resurrection of the body) and the dichotomous (twofold, i.e., physical and spiritual, body and soul/spirit) nature of man.
In my own judgment, the truth is somewhere in the middle. We must appreciate the progressive nature of biblical revelation. When God was giving His Word through the prophets (e.g., Genesis was written by Moses), He did not explain everything all at once. As the whole Bible is authored by God, it is all true (John 17.17), but not until the canon was finished was the whole truth which comprises Scripture completely unveiled. This Holy Book is a living, organic whole, comparable to the fruit of the earth. “For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear” (Mark 4.28). The seed is corn. The sprout is corn. The stalk is corn. The leaves are corn. The tassles are corn. But the “full corn” is only found at the end of the season, “in the ear.” The whole Bible is the full corn.
Applying this, while we must understand earlier Scripture in the light of later Scripture, we must not insist that all the truth of later Scripture is “implicitly contained” in earlier Scripture. Rather, while earlier Scripture is foundational to and compatible with the later, it is also incomplete without it.
More specifically, we can accept the AV translation, while acknowledging that the ancient saints did not fully appreciate how rich such statements would become with a fuller knowledge of anthropology [i.e., doctrine of man] by the later Scriptures which would be written in ensuing centuries.
However the phrase would have been understood by Moses, we are in a position now to see these words as so many leaves leading to the ear and the full corn. With this explanation and these qualifications, allow a few points, made with many other supporting Scripture texts in mind.
Everyone has a soul
This account of Rachel’s death references “her soul.” In having a soul she is like all other human beings. Materialists who deny the reality of the human soul are contradicting the divine revelation, and demeaning humanity in the process. You are not just a body with cells and fluids and tissue and nerves and electro-chemical activity. You have a soul that is morally responsible and must spend eternity in either heaven or hell.
The believer’s soul suffers only in this life
Childbirth is proverbially difficult. Dying in childbirth is even more excruciating. Rachel probably never felt worse than she did on her last day in this world. She named her baby boy, “Ben-Oni,” which means, “son of my sorrow,” but candidly, his painful arrival was but the fruition of her former years. Like all human beings in this life, whatever days we have are “days of sorrow,” especially if we live to riper years (Eccl 5.16-17). But a Christian’s sorrows come to an end on the day of her death (cf. Eccles 7.1). We should feel glad, not grieved, for the sake of those who die in the Lord. Our sadness is appropriate only for ourselves as having lost them, albeit temporarily.
Death is but the departure of the soul from the body
This defines the very moment of death in the biblical worldview. Unseen to men, a person’s soul that has been joined with their body since conception, at death, leaves its earthly tabernacle. This tearing asunder of our two constituent parts, physical and spiritual, is a climactic part of the misery precipitated by human sin and ordained by divine justice. And yet for Christians, death is a release from this vale of tears, an escape from persecutors (Matt 10.28), and the completion of all earthly trials. Jesus referred to His own death as a “departure” (or, “exodus,” see Gk. of Luke
9.31; cf. 2 Pet 1.14-15). “The righteous
The deceased believer’s soul is with the Lord and His saints
At death “shall the dust (i.e., the human body) return to the earth as it was: and the spirit (i.e., the human soul) shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl 12.7; cf. 3.21; Luke 23.43; 2 Cor 5.6, 8; Phil 1.23-24). Glory is a company of “the spirits of just men made perfect” in fellowship with Christ, (Heb 12:23), at rest in their white robes (Rev 6.9-11), with fullness of joy and
pleasures forevermore (Psa 16.11). “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? . . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15.55, 57)! Amen.
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