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isaiah 42:1 (truncated)
- “Here is My Servant, whom I uphold,
My Chosen One, in whom My soul delights. -

YHWH has a Soul!

so why do we think souls are 'living beings'?
gen 2:7
- Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being -

now the word soul is nephesh, a noun, breath, related to naphash, a verb, to breathe. the activity of breathing, or respiration.
and the 'living being' of gen 2:7 is nephesh chay, which maybe could better be said as 'soul living'. as in in flesh, for animals are described like this too.
respiration encapsuled in now-living flesh. for that what lives in creation (the enlivened flesh) will also die.
but, leaving animals out of it now, and focussing on humans, when our flesh dies we know our souls go to 'sleep'.

yet YHWH has no flesh which will die, yet He also has a Soul.
i'm not going to YHWH's Spirit being placed in Yeshua yet, i'm looking at what i can understand at what is being described just before this happens in isaiah 42:1.
also, i'm no scholar of hebrew, nor of greek, i'm a scholar of understanding.
and so my understanding leans toward soul being the respiration of spirit. and it being a description of an activity, i understand it to be what we call consciousness.
(not to divert too much, but one can ponder the Neshamah OF the Ruach...also in gen 2:7, and no, they're not the same thing.)
no consciousness, no activity going on.
so YHWH, who is Spirit, is saying His Consciousness delights in His Chosen One.

to be fair, this was the last penny to drop in the buildup of my understanding of things spiritual, the spirit is far more clearly distinguished in the text of the Word. the understanding of soul needs to be worked out by implication.

yet the ancients clearly also understood their soul was separate to their state of nephesh chay, of being a living being. for they refer to it separately.
but spirit, i'm talking about our spirit, only gets talked about clearly in the gospels, where Yeshua explains we need to be born a second time, in spirit.
so we are physically created 'soul-living' , but have to undergo a further process of creation of 'spirit-living'.
we are created by the Neshamah, but have to undergo the creation by the Ruach...

now i don't want to get too much into what the spirit is all about, because soul is the subject.
and the parable of the sower is all about soul, or soil.
the seeds of the trees that are reflections of our spirits are sown, with the intention of bearing fruit.
and it is in our soul/soil that the seeds grow. in our consciousness.
yet there are differing results depending on the state of the soil/soul.
or maybe, in which soil is sown.

and now i get to the reason i started writing this post, which was to clarify the 'development' of the soul.
if we look at the soul as a (complete) patch of ground, a garden, as it were, and it having different areas of soil with different properties, like as described in the parable, well, can you see how seeds sown in those different areas will perform/grow differently?
to make it more complex, the different areas themselves undergo a development process, a fertilisation process (the parable of the gardener digging around the tree in the third year, for fruit or axe the NEXT year) because there are different trees needing to grow in the different areas.
it's very important to see the differentiation into four distinct areas is pointing out how to look at all these other references to four different things. things of the soul.

one step further, seeing the soils as lands, starts showing the real spiritual layer underneath the story of the israelites path from egypt through the wilderness to canaan, and the need for the temple to be built in jerusalem.
for the land is always there, it just needs to be changed, fertilised, populated. how many times do you not see jerusalem being described as a wasteland? waiting? for what?

please ask questions, i know what i'm talking about, it just feels like i'm talking a different language to everybody else.

Comment

Isaiah 42 is interesting as v1 says that "I will put my spirit on him". So if this is talking of Yeshua then YHWH's spirit is not in Him, but on Him like it was with all other anointed people who received the spirit.

Also, Isaiah 42:19 says: "Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one in covenant with me—blind like the servant of the LORD?"

The "servant" in this chapter is described as blind and deaf. When looking at Hebrews 4:15, does this description of the servant fit the sinless Messiah? I immediately think of "the blind leading the blind" so can't relate Yeshua and the blind servant. Do you maybe have another thought on this which I missed?

Back on the soul...

I was taught in church that the soul is our consciousness and yet I was never told which verses say this. If the nephesh is the church's version of the soul/consciousness then animals also have souls so if human souls are to be "saved" then animals' souls also needs to be "saved".

I do love animals, but won't go as far as telling them about the Good News...😳

As you mentioned, nephesh is a verb which is why the word to me is more like a `life-force` as it is an energizing thing that gives the body the means to be alive, so to speak. That is why everything that had a nephesh/soul in them were destroyed in the flood.

Therefore where v1 says "in whom My soul delights" then to me it is like saying in modern speak that "I had a refreshing XYZ and now my spirit feels refreshed". Nothing changed in my actual spirit, but my body feels energized and so I then associate my body with my spirit when I try to express how I feel.

You raise a good point that "our spirit, only gets talked about clearly in the gospels". So might it be that how we understand the English concept of "soul" might be misinterpreted by us seeing as "spirit" was used by the first century believers? The nephesh is still the verb/force which brings life, but it is only an energy and not a "part" of the human.

Think of the electricity that lights up a light bulb. It isn't part of the bulb, but an external source like the breath was external to Adam. The filament, glass and metal connectors forms the bulb and the light that it gives of is the expression of the energy going through the bulb. So the light could represent the spirit in this example.

Thinking about it now, that relates to what you mentioned about the soul being `developed`. As more energy flows through the filament, the brighter the light glows.

As for the garden, we are told that the parable talks of individuals and how they deal with the Word. Each person is different and either accepts or rejects the Word. What I fail to see is what I understand you are trying to present is that the soil in the parable represents different stages of a person's heart and that the gardener changes the soil and thereby has an impact on the "soul" of the person. What you might see as stages is what I understand happens through the journey/growth of a person.

Are there maybe other verses we can look at to expand on the garden /soil idea as I have never looked at it from this perspective?

Isaiah 42 is interesting as v1 says that "I will put my spirit on him".  So if this is talking of Yeshua then YHWH's spirit is not in Him, but on Him like it was with all other anointed people who received the spirit. 
 
Also, Isaiah 42:19 says: "Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one in covenant with me—blind like the servant of the LORD?" 
 
The "servant" in this chapter is described as blind and deaf. When looking at Hebrews 4:15, does this description of the servant fit the sinless Messiah?  I immediately think of "the blind leading the blind" so can't relate Yeshua and the blind servant.  Do you maybe have another thought on this which I missed? 
 
Back on the soul... 
 
I was taught in church that the soul is our consciousness and yet I was never told which verses say this.  If the nephesh is the church's version of the soul/consciousness then animals also have souls so if human souls are to be "saved" then animals' souls also needs to be "saved".   
 
I do love animals, but won't go as far as telling them about the Good News...😳 
 
As you mentioned, nephesh is a verb which is why the word to me is more like a `life-force` as it is an energizing thing that gives the body the means to be alive, so to speak.  That is why everything that had a nephesh/soul in them were destroyed in the flood. 
 
Therefore where v1 says "in whom My soul delights" then to me it is like saying in modern speak that "I had a refreshing XYZ and now my spirit feels refreshed".  Nothing changed in my actual spirit, but my body feels energized and so I then associate my body with my spirit when I try to express how I feel. 
 
You raise a good point that "our spirit, only gets talked about clearly in the gospels".  So might it be that how we understand the English concept of "soul" might be misinterpreted by us seeing as "spirit" was used by the first century believers?  The nephesh is still the verb/force which brings life, but it is only an energy and not a "part" of the human. 
 
Think of the electricity that lights up a light bulb.  It isn't part of the bulb, but an external source like the breath was external to Adam.  The filament, glass and metal connectors forms the bulb and the light that it gives of is the expression of the energy going through the bulb.  So the light could represent the spirit in this example. 
 
Thinking about it now, that relates to what you mentioned about the soul being `developed`.  As more energy flows through the filament, the brighter the light glows. 
 
As for the garden, we are told that the parable talks of individuals and how they deal with the Word.  Each person is different and either accepts or rejects the Word.  What I fail to see is what I understand you are trying to present is that the soil in the parable represents different stages of a person's heart and that the gardener changes the soil and thereby has an impact on the "soul" of the person.  What you might see as stages is what I understand happens through the journey/growth of a person. 
 
Are there maybe other verses we can look at to expand on the garden /soil idea as I have never looked at it from this perspective?

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