The expression, “immortal soul,” does not appear in the Bible, nor does the Bible even remotely teach that a “separate entity” dwells within the human body and escapes to live elsewhere when the body dies. The first use of the word soul in the Bible is in Genesis 2:7. In this text we are told that God created man from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the “breath of life,” and man “became a living soul.”
A “living soul” is simply a living being, or a living creature, which, as this text reveals, results from the union of the breath of life with the organism, or body. The body is not the soul. The breath of life is not the soul. It is when, through divine favor and power, the breath gives life to the body that the combination of the two result in a “living soul.”
Solomon said that man and beast have all one breath, and he was right. Concerning humans and lower animals destroyed in the Flood we read, “All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died”—Gen. 7:21,22
Because the brute creation lives by means of the same “breath of life” which enables man to live, all animals are also “living souls,” and this is clearly established in the Word of God. This important truth is concealed from the casual reader of the Bible through the inconsistency of translation. For example, Genesis 1:24 reads, “God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
In this text the expression “living creature” is a translation of precisely the same Hebrew words as those which are translated “living soul” in Genesis 2:7, where the reference is to Adam—the words “creature” and “soul” both being translations of the Hebrew word nephesh. Only because the translators endeavored to establish a difference between man and beast, which the Scriptures do not warrant, did they use the word “creature” when the reference was to the lower animals, and “soul” when the text referred to man. No wonder Solomon wrote, “As the one dieth, so dieth the other.”
When Adam died, his body returned to the dust—“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen. 3:19) The God-given right to live, implemented by the breath which God breathed into his nostrils, reverted to God. The thought is clearly stated by Solomon, who, in describing what happens when a man dies, wrote, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”—Eccles. 12:7
The simple truth set forth in this text is confused in the minds of many by a misunderstanding of the word “spirit.” It translates a Hebrew word which simply means “breath,” or, as in this instance, the invisible power of life. In his sermon on Mars’ hill, Paul said that in God, “we live, and move, and have our being.”—Acts 17:28
This text does not even remotely suggest that when a man dies there is a conscious entity which escapes from his body and is taken up to God in heaven. The word “return” used in the text precludes the possibility of such an interpretation. The body returns to the dust because it came from the dust. If the “spirit” was a separate entity which returned to God, it would mean that the conscious entity previously dwelt with God and was permitted to come to earth temporarily to inhabit a human body. How unreasonable such a conclusion would be!
How consistent, though, is Solomon’s definition of death with the facts set forth in the Bible concerning the human living soul, or being. When the body and the breath return to their original sources, man is left as though he had never existed. The living soul, or being, no longer exists. It has died, and death is the penalty for sin. Ezekiel 18:4 declares, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”