a resurrection in Zarephath
Rev. Jefferson Vann
In “a resurrection in Zarephath” Jefferson Vann suggests a new translation of 1 Kings 17:21-22.
The LORD had told Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidonian territory. He was to be provided for there by a widow. Elijah went as ordered, and found the widow, but he had to convince her that if she helped him, God would also keep her and her son alive. He did so miraculously by keeping her oil supply from being depleted despite the drought.
Then her son suddenly died. She was distraught, and so was Elijah. He took the young man to an upper room and prayed to God to restore him to life. If you know your Bible, you know what happened. The LORD raised the young man to life again.
The King James Version described the event with these words:
“And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again. And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived” (1 Kings 17:21-22).
Cumming commented on this text “Here is a very precious thought: the soul is totally distinct from the body. When it speaks of the child dying, it says, “His breath departed;” but when it speaks of his restoration, it is not said his breath returned, which would be true of the mere animal, but that also his soul returned.”[1]
But a modern translation differs from both Cummings and the KJV. The New English Translation reads “The LORD answered Elijah’s prayer; the boy’s breath returned to him and he lived” (17:22 NET). The NET translators recognized that the Hebrew word that the KJV translated as “soul” could refer to breath. Even the KJV translators felt forced to render the word as breath in Job 41:21 because they could not imagine the Leviathan as having a soul. They shared Cumming’s dualistic anthropology.
Despite its normally extensive translation notes, the NET does not explain why its translators chose to render נֶפֶשׁ as breath in 1 Kings 17. They do state (in reference to Genesis 1:30 where the term first appears that “נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) refers to breath or the throat and by extension to breathing creatures or the soul.”[2] So, in this context, they rendered the term as breath, which may be the correct rendering. As such, the text is not proof of the survival of the soul as a conscious being after the death of the body.
But since the NET scholars admitted that נֶפֶשׁ could be translated as throat, I wondered if that was the idea that the author of 1 Kings intended to convey. Could the Hebrew of 1 Kings 17 be translated into English using the primary definition of נֶפֶשׁ in Hebrew?
The primary definition of נֶפֶשׁ in Hebrew is throat.[3] As I approached this text to translate it today, I wondered if Elijah might have prayed not for a separated soul to return, nor even for a lost breath to return, but for the dead throat to be restored to life.
1 Kings 17:21-22 (JDV) Then he stretched himself out over the boy three times. He cried out to Yahveh and said, “Yahveh my God, please let this boy’s throat be restored inside him!” And Yahveh listened to Elijah’s voice, and the boy’s throat was restored inside him, and he lived.
Now, for this translation to accurately reflect the Hebrew, two other questions had to be answered besides the meaning of נֶפֶשׁ as throat.
Can the verb שׁוב (shuv) refer to restoration? It appears to do so in Ezekiel 16:55:
“As for your sisters, Sodom and her daughters will be restored to their former status, Samaria and her daughters will be restored to their former status, and you and your daughters will be restored to your former status” (NET).
Next, can the phrase עַל־קִרְבּ֖וֹ be accurately translated as “inside him”? The noun קרֶב does refer to the “inward part” of the body[4] – so, yes.
What happened in Zarephath that day was a resurrection from the dead. The widow’s son was completely dead, and he was completely restored to life by God’s power. The event says a lot about who God is, and why we should put our trust in him. But the event as described in 1 Kings does not support the pagan notion of death as a separation between a dead body and a living soul that survives it.
[1] Cumming John. Expository Readings on the Books of Kings. Arthur Hall Virtue 1859. pp. 131-132.
[2] (NET Bible, Full Notes Edition, Thomas Nelson, 1996. p. 5. [Note B].
[3] Köhler Ludwig et al. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Study ed. Brill 2001. p. 1740. [6283 נֶפֶשׁ]. Holladay, William Lee, Ludwig Köhler, and Ludwig Köhler. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden: Brill, 1971. p. 242.
[4] Holladay, p. 324.