Words · Hebrew Words · Lesson 4, word 4 of 5
לֵבlev / levav
The inner person: mind, will and conscience, not only feelings.
Why this word is here. The Old Testament's word for the control centre of a person; 'heart' in English now means mostly emotion, which misleads.
What it means
The lexicon range: inner man, mind, will, heart, understanding. Specifically: the heart as soul and mind; knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory; inclination, resolution and determination of will; conscience; moral character; the seat of appetites, emotions and passions; and the seat of courage.
In Hebrew anthropology the lev thinks, decides, remembers and believes. 'Trust in the LORD with all your heart' is a command to the mind and will first of all.
Where you meet it
And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5 (BSB)
Love God 'with all your heart (levav)'. Jesus quotes this as the first and greatest commandment.
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the LORD does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 (BSB)
'Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (lev).' Said while passing over David's impressive brothers.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Psalm 51:10 (BSB)
'Create in me a clean heart (lev), O God.' David asks for a new inner person, not new feelings about his sin.
Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life.
Proverbs 4:23 (BSB)
Anchor verse 'Guard your heart (lev), for everything you do flows from it.' The lev as the source the whole life runs from.
Why it matters
Lev heals a split modern readers bring to the Bible, where 'heart' means sincerity of feeling and 'mind' means doctrine. Scripture's heart does both: it understands, chooses and loves. That is why conversion is pictured as heart surgery (Ezekiel 36, a new heart) and why 'heart' sins include unbelief and stubbornness, not only wrong affections.
Watch out
The over-claim in preaching is 'the heart is the emotions, as opposed to the head'. The lexicon gives thinking, memory, conscience and will before emotion, and some 'heart' verses are about calculation ('said in his heart' often means 'thought to himself'). Romanticising the heart as pure feeling also reverses Jeremiah 17:9, where the lev is 'deceitful above all things', a diagnosis of the whole inner person.
In this lesson
- goel (from ga'al) (גֹּאֵל): The kinsman-redeemer who buys back and defends his own.
- mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ): An anointed one, king, priest, or the promised Messiah.
- nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ): A living being, the self, one's whole life.
- dabar (דָּבָר): A word, a matter, a thing, speech that does things.
Sources
- Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon (BDB, 1906)
- Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible / STEP Hebrew data
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