The Great Shift

by James L. Kugel

  The Spiritual Projectile

  The word ruaḥ had another use in biblical Hebrew. It referred to an immaterial and invisible spirit dispatched by God; the ruaḥ would travel from Him and enter a person, effecting some fundamental change in the process. (Clearly this was another way of expressing the basic phenomenon that we have been charting, the divine entry into the semipermeable mind.) This is rather similar to the picture observed in late- and post-biblical texts,* wherein an external wicked spirit—such as the Spirit of Licentiousness, the Spirit of Hate, of Anger, and so forth—is dispatched by Satan or some other archfiend to enter the victim’s mind and lead him or her astray. But in earlier biblical texts, the “spirit” is sent by God and it usually serves to transform the person into God’s servant or to grant him supernatural powers. The biblical story of Samson, for example, is full of such transforming spirits:

  The woman bore a son, and she named him Samson. The boy grew up, and the LORD blessed him. The spirit [ruaḥ] of the LORD began to stir him in the encampment of [the tribe of] Dan . . .

  [One time,] he went down to Timnah, and when they entered the Timnah vineyards, a lion came roaring at him. Then the spirit of the LORD rushed upon him and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands, as one might tear apart a little goat. But he didn’t say a word to his father and mother of what he had done . . .

  [Later,] the spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty of its men . . .

  When he reached Lehi, the Philistines came shouting toward him, but the spirit of the LORD rushed upon him and the ropes that were [binding] his arms became like flax when it’s on fire, and the bonds melted off his arms. (Jdg 13:24–15:14)

  In these incidents, God’s ruaḥ “rushes upon”10 Samson and suddenly he can tear apart an attacking lion with his bare hands, or kill thirty men unaided, or rip off the ropes holding him as if they were mere flax. God sent a similar sort of ruaḥ to other figures in those early days:11

  [About the judge Othniel:] The spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he ruled Israel, and the LORD gave King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram into his hand. (Jdg 3:10)

  [About Jephthah the Gileadite:] Then the spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh . . . He inflicted massive defeat on them. (Jdg 11:29–33)

  [About King Saul:] As he turned away to leave Samuel, God gave him [Saul] another heart, and all these signs were fulfilled that day. When they were going from there to Gibeah, a band of prophets met him, and the spirit of God rushed upon him, and he began to act like a prophet amongst them. (1 Sam 10:9–11)

  The list goes on, but these examples should make clear that a ruaḥ was something like a spiritual projectile, sent by God to enter or land upon an individual and change his behavior or abilities in some significant way. In fact, just as Satan sent evil spirits in later writings such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, so God in earlier times sometimes sent a ruaḥ to do harm or mislead:

  Now the spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD began tormenting him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “An evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command the servants who attend you to look for someone who is skillful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will feel better.” (1 Sam 16:14–16)

  [God tells Isaiah about the Rabshakeh] “I will put a spirit in him, so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own country.” (2 Kgs 19:7)

  At least in one passage, an evil ruaḥ is said to have come before God and volunteered to mislead:

  [The prophet Micaiah reports to King Ahab:] “And the spirit came forth and stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will lead him [Ahab] astray.’ The LORD said, ‘How?’ And he [the spirit] said: ‘I will go out and become a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets.’ And He said, ‘[All right!] Lead him astray and get the better of him—go now and do it!’ So it has come about that the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours, since the LORD has decreed disaster upon you.”12 (2 Chron 18:20–22)

  The very existence of this “projectile” spirit seems to have been a more explicit, and convincing, way of imagining how God (or later, wicked angels or Satan) attached Himself to the human being. It was like a midair refueling. God did not personally slip inside people or, on the other extreme, simply whisper something in Samson’s ear. Instead, He sent an invisible intermediary to come upon Samson and equip him with those special abilities.* Clearly, the divine projectile sort of ruaḥ is quite different from the ruaḥ that was inside the human being—the breath in his lungs or, metaphorically, his state of mind.13 But the tradition of these divine projectiles, these ruḥot, may have had something to do with the gradual transition that is the subject of this chapter.

  A New Inwardness

  Despite all that was said above, at some point ancient Israelites began thinking of themselves as having what we usually mean by “souls,” and then began imposing this understanding on the three words mentioned.14 The evidence for the later stages of this change is quite clear, as we shall see. But how it began, and why, are not so easy to determine. One possible source of evidence, however, is the book of Psalms.

  For the most part, psalms have a straightforward agenda. “Help me, I’m in terrible danger,” many of them say, or “Save Your people now, since our enemies are threatening.” Others are psalms of praise to God or words of thanksgiving for divine intervention, either on the part of an individual or the people as a whole; a number of psalms also appear to have been composed for the celebration of a festival. In general, the psalms were, as we have seen, clearly connected to temple worship, intended to be recited as an accompaniment to an animal sacrifice, either one offered by the people as a whole or recited on the part of an individual, in payment of a vow or the like. These sorts of psalms hardly call for the psalmist to reflect on his inner state (other than saying such things as “I’m in deep trouble,” or “You really saved me”), or even to acknowledge that he or she has an inner state. So the psalmists usually don’t talk about what’s inside them; this is just not part of the program. It’s either “You,” “You,” “You,” or else “He,” “He,” “He,” where both these pronouns refer to God. It is against this background that one must consider the exceptions, such as the following:

  O God, You are my God, I search for You, my nefesh thirsts for You,

  My flesh faints for You, like a parched and thirsty land without water . . .

  So I will bless You as long as I live, I will lift up my hands [in prayer] and call on Your name.

  My nefesh is sated with a rich feast, and my mouth praises You with joyful lips,

  when I turn my thoughts to You on my bed, calling You to mind in the watches of the night.

  For You have been my help, and in Your wings’ protection I rejoice. My nefesh clings to You, Your right hand supports me. (Ps 63:1–9)

  I have left the word nefesh in Hebrew, but “soul” would certainly seem to be the right translation here. The psalm is, rather exceptionally, concerned with the psalmist’s inner feelings, his “thirst” for God* and his desire to come close to Him. Particularly remarkable is the mention of how he turns his thoughts to God “on my bed,” “in the watches of the night,” when apparently he is alone and not participating in any ceremonial or liturgical occasion.

  All this strikes a rather different note from that of most psalms. But it is not entirely unique:

  At night my hand is stretched out [to God] without ceasing; my nefesh refuses to be comforted.

  When I call God to mind, I cry out; I think [of Him] and my ruaḥ falters.

  My eyes are held wide open,15 I am so troubled I can’t even speak.

  I think of days of old, times long gone by; at night I think and commune with my heart, I think and search my ruaḥ. (Ps 77:2–7)

  Here again, the psalmist is apparently alone at night. The precise meaning of
many of the expressions in this psalm is still debated by scholars, but the overall picture is clear. God is not present. Rather, He is called to mind, remembered, cried out to; and then, in going over past events, the psalmist (not God!) looks deep into his heart and searches his ruaḥ. I have again left nefesh and ruaḥ untranslated, though it seems to me the usual translations—“soul” and/or “spirit”—are altogether appropriate here.

  These nighttime yearnings are not limited to the Psalms. A passage in the book of Isaiah—one that scholars date “late,” to the period following the Babylonian exile—has the prophet say:

  O LORD, we cry out to Your name; and Your name is the soul’s (nefesh) delight.

  My soul (nafshi) longs for You at night, and the spirit (ruaḥ) inside me searches You out. (Isa 26:8–9)

  Here again the psalmist is alone at night, longing for God. But the larger point is that in all these passages, it is the “spirit inside me” that longs for God and searches Him out. By the same token, the speaker in Psalm 77 clearly has an interior something that is causing him pain, a pain that arises specifically when he thinks of God or reaches out to Him; thinking of God causes his ruaḥ to fail, or later, brings him to search out his ruaḥ. So too:

  My ruaḥ is fainting within me; inside me, my heart is numb.

  I consider the days gone by and think about all You have done, mulling over the work of Your hands.

  I stretch out my hands to You [in prayer], my nefesh longs for You like the thirsty earth.

  Answer me soon, O LORD; my ruaḥ is giving out. (Ps 143:4–7)

  As noted, this focus on what is going on “within me,” on my nefesh or ruaḥ, is not typical of most psalms, but scholars are generally reluctant to assign such compositions to a particular movement or school, or even to point to a specific time when they emerged (though many of them are held to be “post-exilic”). Wherever and whenever they originated, however, their interiority is altogether exceptional. So too with these lines:

  Make a pure heart for me, and put a new, steady spirit (ruaḥ) within me;

  Don’t send me away from Your presence, and do not take Your holy spirit (ruaḥ) away from me. (Ps 51:12–13)

  It seems here that the ruaḥ is a permanent resident within a person, rather like his heart. If the old ruaḥ is no good, then, as the first line says, a new one will have to be substituted.16 But the second line adds that this indwelling ruaḥ is Your holy spirit—that is, it somehow belongs to, or is connected, to God; indeed, it is “holy.”* Later, this same psalm asserts:

  If You wished a sacrifice [from me] I would give it; but it is not an offering You want:

  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit (ruaḥ), a broken and crushed heart You will not turn away. (Ps 51:18–19)

  This is the psalmist’s spirit, deep inside him. Broken and crushed at the thought of his sins (mentioned earlier in this psalm, lines 4–7), it is like, or in fact better than, a sacrifice offered at the temple, since it is what will bring forgiveness from God.

  Late Biblical Psalms

  Biblical psalms were, for the most part, connected to temple worship, but scholars long ago noticed that a few seem to be placeless and occasionless, apparently designed to be recited anywhere, as an independent act of piety.17 Perhaps the best known example is that of Psalm 119, an eightfold alphabetical acrostic18 (making it by far the longest psalm in the Psalter, 176 verses in all). It certainly does not appear to have been designed for public recitation (doing so takes quite a while!).19 Was it originally intended to serve as a kind of spiritual exercise, or some sort of litany, and/or a series of repeated requests for revelation?20 No one can say for sure. Scholars have also wondered about the unceasing references to God’s torah, His laws, statutes, ordinances, rules, and so forth (eight much-repeated synonyms in all); perhaps this was, as one recent essay has put it, a reflection of a new sort of piety, “seeking Torah as a substitute for seeking God.”21

  Whatever the case, one aspect of this psalm makes it stand out from others in the book of Psalms: it is all about the psalmist’s inner “me.” Endlessly, he refers to his own state of mind: “I am seized with rage,” “my flesh creeps from the fear of You, I am in awe of your rulings,” “My eyes pine away for Your salvation, for Your promise of victory,” “My eyes shed streams of water because people do not keep Your Torah,” and so on and so forth. In addition to his other bodily references ​—“my lips,” “my mouth,” “my eyes,” “my tongue”—there is, of course, “my nefesh.”

  We also learn about the psalmist’s longing for God, what he has done to come closer to God, his devotion to God’s precepts, his struggles with his enemies (“the wicked”), his resolutions for the future—but all this is filtered through the psalmist’s own, very present self. I do not say this in disapproval,22 and in any case some might explain this psalm’s intense focus on the speaker as a natural consequence of the psalm’s unique literary genre and/or intended setting and use, about which we know nothing. All this notwithstanding, I believe most readers will recognize that the striking difference between Psalm 119 and most other biblical psalms is not simply a matter of its length or unique literary genre, but of its steady gaze inward.

  The Thanksgiving Hymns

  If one asks where all this is headed, part of the answer is found in compositions that belong to the late- or early post-biblical period.23 The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, include a series of Thanksgiving Hymns, so named because many of them begin with the formulaic phrase “I thank you, my Lord.” At first glance, these hymns might seem like biblical psalms, which, as we have seen, often addressed words of thanks to God, usually in some generalized, one-size-fits-all form.* But the Thanksgiving Hymns have an altogether different flavor from that of most biblical psalms.24 Like Psalm 119, the speaker of the Thanksgiving Hymns is intensely concerned with his own inner self (which he refers to as his ruaḥ). He repeatedly stresses how unworthy he is, being by nature a filthy creature, a thing of “impurity,” “made out of mud,” “in sinfulness from [my mother’s] womb,” and so forth. At one point he wonders out loud how he could have attained the knowledge he has acquired, since he is certainly not worthy of it:

  These things I know through Your wisdom, since You have opened my ears to wondrous mysteries, though I am a creature of clay mixed with water, the essence of shamefulness and a fountain of impurity, a smelting pot of transgression and constructed of sin, a spirit of error and depravity without knowledge and terrified by [Your] proper judgments. (1QHa Thanksgiving Hymns col 9:23–25)25

  For the most part, the “I” of these Thanksgiving Hymns is in an utterly spiritual world, the stark inside world of the soul—a place of great darkness and bright light, of human insignificance and divine splendor.26 If one had to find something in the Bible comparable to the world of these hymns, it would not be in the Psalms, but in the book of Daniel (perhaps the last biblical book of the Hebrew Bible to be written, and thus completed around the time of the Thanksgiving Hymns’ composition). Here God “reveals deep and hidden things, He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him” (Dan 2:21–22).

  Another of the Thanksgiving Hymns offers thanks to God for having

  saved my soul (nafshi) from the Pit and lifted me up from the Underworld of Abaddon to the eternal heights [that is, of heaven], where I can walk about on an endless expanse. [Thus] I know that there is hope for one whom You have created from dust to [join] the everlasting company [of angels]. You have purified the debased spirit (ruaḥ) of [its] grave misdeeds, to stand in assembly with the host of holy ones [that is, the angels]. (col 11:20–23)

  Whatever else one might say about such passages, they do not describe anything from the outside world, the world of the sun.27 This person is not describing any earthly journey, but the voyage of his soul on high, up to the home of the angels. Thanks to this voyage, he knows “that there is hope for one whom You have created from dust”; he will be able ultimately to “stand in assembly” with the a
ngels for all eternity, because, however impure his physical being may be by nature, his soul has been purified and is now fit to join their company.

  All this, it seems, is the endpoint of what began with the new interiority seen above. Now the nefesh or ruaḥ has become rather like what we mean by the human soul, which is, in fact, what the ancient Near Eastern temple was conceived to be, the meeting-place of heaven and earth. Now this meeting takes place inside the human being. The soul is thus nothing less than the carburetor where two unlikes, heaven and earth, commingle to power all that humans think and understand. As another Thanksgiving Hymn puts it:

  I have known You, my God, through the ruaḥ that You have put inside me, and I have listened faithfully to Your wondrous counsel through Your holy spirit (ruaḥ). You have opened up knowledge within me through Your hidden perception and the wellspring of Your strength. (col 20:14–16)