seems to be dying many small deaths: “We consume our years like a sigh” (Ps. 90:10).
Although the author of the psalm directs his blackest emotions at the heavens here, we cannot overlook the fact that he (apparently miraculously) continues to live and write. It is impossible to read the scriptures and not notice the myriad forces that menace and threaten one’s personal identity, but at the same time, the Torah is a tribute to the remarkable capacity of the human soul to survive to tell the tale, an achievement of both grit and grace. Snatched from the grip of Sheol, these moments of survival suddenly become the occasion for praise by the psalmist. It is natural, then, that the Psalms pair, in almost exactly equal quantities, psalms of supplication with psalms of praise. (These two types comprise two-thirds of the Psalms.)4 While the psalms of supplication give voice to the crushing weight of sorrow and suffering, the psalms of praise are jubilant, celebratory, and restorative; the former describe the downward slope into the depths of anguish, and the latter record the capacity of the soul to ascend from the pits of life (Psalm 121 is specifically called “a song of ascents” in this regard). The Psalms represent the soul in rich, polyphonic notes, both high and low, exultant and downhearted, a rowdy mixture of fears and torments on the one hand and undaunted spiritual aspirations on the other.
NEPHESH AND TRANSCENDENT LONGINGS
Besides suggesting respiration, personal identity, and life force, nephesh is also associated with immeasurable and sublime longings. Derived from the root wh (to desire) and the verb ns (to rise), nephesh is related to hopes and cravings that would elevate the mundane existence of humanity. In this sense, while nephesh is as vulnerable as a naked body in the desert and as susceptible to decomposition as any other creature of earth, it also embodies the ethereal and transcendent desires of man and woman, their ferocious appetite for God. However brief and transient our lives are, human beings have inexhaustible desires that distinguish us from all other animals, and nephesh is the source of these emotions, the restless energy that makes us long and hanker for impossible things: love, righteousness, God. “As a deer yearning for streams of water, so my soul yearns for you, God. / My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. / O when shall I come to appear before God?” (Ps. 42:1–2; see also Ps. 25:1; 130:5; Song of Songs 1:7).
The nephesh represents the far-reaching and untethered desires of humankind, the Abrahamic drive to seek, to strive, to reach for the unknown. Insatiable and infinite in its hunger, the soul is forever wanting, forever roaming in search of new worlds and new possibilities. The soul stretches out and follows “knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”5 It is endlessly drawn toward God, a moth to the flame.
Because it is sealed with the imago Dei, the nephesh also participates in the divine nature of God and shares with him the uncanny powers of creation. Endowed with the ability to name the things of creation, human beings have been given the art of language, with the potential to make something out of nothing, life out of death, order out of chaos, and beauty out of a blank canvas. Lest this blessing become a curse, however, biblical thought is relentless in rebuking man for his vanity and actions that disdain mortal limits. The children of Adam are constantly reminded of their origins in the earth, that they are made of dust and ashes. (The name “Adam” is, after all, derived from the Hebrew adamah, or soil.) Recall this solemn moment in Genesis: “The Lord God fashioned the human from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature” (Gen. 2:4–47). Working with earth and clay, God infused this organism with his own spirit and thus imbued it with dignity and divine properties. The soul is thus bifurcated, a curious mixture of both chthonic and transcendent qualities.
NEPHESH AND THE HEART
Since the Bible often pairs soul and heart, we should consider the points of contact between these two, as in the great commandment in Deuteronomy, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might” (Deut. 6:5), and Josiah’s determination to follow the Lord’s decrees with “all his heart and soul” (2 Kings 23:3). This injunction is of supreme significance and is to be fixed on one’s arm and forehead, inscribed on one’s doorposts, engraved on one’s heart, and recited to one’s children. Everything that one is, everything that one can be, is contained in these words and implies a total, comprehensive dedication to the covenant with YHWH. “Heart” and “soul” bleed into each other; both can be seen as repositories of the transcendent, spiritual qualities of human beings, and both are centers of love and reverence. Together, they are the intimate sanctuaries of human nature, in which God confers life, wisdom, and understanding, “where individuals face themselves with their feelings, their reason, and their conscience, and where they assume their responsibilities by making decisive choices for themselves, whether those are open to God or not.”6 To retreat into the deep caverns of the heart and soul is thus to find the real “me,” the oldest and nearest and truest “me.” Somewhere deeper than our public personas lie heart and soul, where God will suddenly confront us with the most momentous and vital of decisions, will undress and strip away our egos, leaving something of greater value, something made of dust, debris, and sublimity.
It can be assumed that every atom of one’s being is summoned in these moments of crisis and revelation, so that all of one’s emotions are roused: sadness and anguish, love and joy, bitterness and confusion, delight and praise (Jer. 13:17; 1 Sam. 1:10; Ps. 31:8, 35:9; Song of Songs 1:7). The Bible makes prodigal use of human sentiments, preferring the idioms of pathos, poetry, song, and prayer to philosophical discourse. By gathering together the untidy array of human desires, it employs a volcanically emotive manner of speech, combining spontaneous, heart-felt effusions with moments of carefully scripted artifice. The balance between artlessness and artifice gives many of these texts a vitality and throbbing pulse that separates this stormier art from other more polished, cerebral styles.
Though there are numerous cases in which heart and soul touch and melt into one another, there are also boundaries drawn in the Bible. It seems, for example, that biblical writers assigned a special place to knowledge when speaking of the geography of heart: the heart, not the mind, is the dwelling place of human reason. Hence the author of the Psalms can pray that “the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart” will be acceptable to God (Ps. 19:14). If reason operates from the terrain of the heart, as this text implies, we can assume that human knowledge, in the biblical view, is undivided from the emotions and shares a kinship with them.
The Melodians’s classic song the “Rivers of Babylon” ruminates on this exact sentiment. When they pray that God will receive the words of their mouths and the meditation of their hearts, the song beautifully explores the tangled threads of knowledge and emotions in the Bible. Better than many academic exegetes, they capture the desolation of the Psalms, as well as their impossible dreams and hopes. In a wistful, plaintive key, the song pleads for justice and redemption in a world far away from home, somewhere in exile on the lonely shores of the river of Babylon, believing that the musings and ponderings of the heart will guide those in bondage to a land of freedom and truth. In the magic of such art, affect is subtly transformed into knowledge and knowledge into affect:
By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down
And there we wept when we remembered Zion
Cause the wicked carried us away, captivity
Requiring of us a song
How shall we sing King Alpha’s song
In a strange land?7
Indeed, how shall we sing God’s song in a strange land? This is the question that has been the provocation and inspiration for a lot of black music in the Americas. In drawing on the biblical text, The Melodians saw themselves and their peoples through the predicament of the ancient Israelites, and they joined their melodies and prayers with
