The burden of the
word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the
heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man
within him (Zech 12:1)
In a previous post reviewing Martin Tanner’s debate
with James White on deification, I forget to mention one of the exegetical
points White attempted to use against LDS anthropology, and that is Zech 12:1. In the view of White, this verse explicitly precludes belief in the personal pre-existence of humans. Kevin Barney
offered an exegetically-sound response to another Evangelical Protestant’s appeal to this
verse:
The critical question
for the meaning of the last line is how we should understand the last Hebrew
word of the verse, beqirebbo. Does it modify the verb (i.e., the Lord formed
within him the spirit of man), which might be taken to suggest that God
actually created the spirit spatially within man’s physical body? If so, this
would be most consonant with Christian creationism and would seem inconsistent
with a prior existence of that spirit apart from the body. That reading may be
possible, but (particularly given the word order) I construe the expression
with “the spirit of man” (ruach adam) (the Lord formed the spirit of
man, i.e., that which is within him [or in the midst of him; his inward part]).
The basic word here is qereb, “inward part, midst,” with the preposition
be- “in” and the third person singular masculine pronominal suffix –o, “of
him.” To me that word is definitional. The line says that God created the
spirit of man, and then identifies or defines the spirit as that which is
inside him, that is, his “inward part.” The word does not modify the act of
creation; it is simply descriptive of what the spirit is and where it (normally)
resides. If the underlying conception here is monistic, then the spirit only resides
in the midst of the body; if it is not, then a preexistent existence of the
spirit apart from the body is just as plausible as a post mortem one.
