The Heart of the Matter, Part One:

What is the Heart?

Understanding what predisposes people to do what they do has been the subject of hundreds of sociological and psychological studies. As the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it, sociology concerns itself with the study of society, social institutions, and social relationships. Specifically, it focuses on the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings. Its focus then is purely on what surrounds man, what is outside of him, such as the environment, culture, and time in which he lives. Psychology, on the other hand, is concerned with the study of man’s mind and behavior Specifically its focus is the mental or behavioral characteristics of an individual or group. Its focus then is what is within man, what he thinks and feels, the way he behaves, and what makes him work this way. Science, therefore, has produced two fields in which man and his behavior may be studied. One studies what it outside man and how that impacts man, and the other studies what is inside man and how that makes him behave.

Perhaps this topic alone of man’s behavior is what sets the discipline of theology apart from sociology and psychology. While sociology and psychology are always coming up with new findings and propogating new advances in behaviorial studies, theology (biblical theology in specific) never has new findings. Its advances were made and finalized when a writer of Scripture penned the last letter of his piece. From the very genesis of creation and mankind to their apocalyptic end, the Bible has been very clear concerning the origin, nature, and behavior of man. Should sociology and psychology ever choose to found all future studies of man on what the Bible has already said about man, the only findings and advances made would be those which sought to deliver man from himself (rather than a deliverance from his environment, or deliverance from his past). This article is the first in a three part series of an attempt to discover what the Bible already says about man and his behavior, as well as what conclusions and solutions the Bible offers concerning the same. Because the Bible establishes the behavioral problems of man within him, rather than without, this series will simply attempt to discover the heart of the matter of man and his behavior.

At the outset it is necessary to establish the fact that the Bible considers that immaterial and unseen part of man as his heart, or his inner being. On that basis, let’s observe how the Bible defines the heart and its constituents. According to the Jewish mind the heart involves all that a man is. The Hebrew word is levav [1] the references to it in the Old Testament are mostly metaphorical and point to “the center of human psychical and spiritual life, to the entire inner life of a person.”[2] Based on this understanding, the heart means and involves the following things.[3] First, Psalm 84:2 depicts the heart side by side with the soul. The soul and heart, in this particular context, are deeply longing to be in God’s presence. He is thirsty for God. He states that his heart and flesh cry out for the living God in Whom his thirst is quenched and his “long-denied delight takes possession even of his bodily nature.”[4] The Hebrew language is noted for its use of parallels. This basically means that it often uses two words to describe the same thing.[5] This is what David has done here with heart and flesh. Both of these terms describe the soul. Therefore, the heart is simply that vital principle within a person that is capable of feelings, affections, and emotions.

Second, feelings, affections, and emotions are all exactly the way the Old Testament pictures the heart. Deuteronomy 6:5, for example, speaks of the responsibility of the Israelite to love God with all their heart. Proverbs 5:12 identifies the heart again with the entire person, by noting that the heart can be contemptuous. In Proverbs 31:11 the heart is described as experiencing security and trust as the virtuous woman is secure in her husband. The heart is also often described in terms of being glad, happy, and satisfied (e.g. after eating and drinking: Psa. 104:15; Ruth 3:7).

Third, the heart is also the mode of thinking and acting. David cries out for purity of thought and action in Psalm 51:10, and in 101:4 states that he would not allow perversity to be part of his thinking and acting. Solomon described his father David as one whose behavior was sincere and upright in I Kings 3:6 (cf. I Kings 9:4) And in Psalm 64:6 David, in parallelism, identifies the inward thoughts of a man with his heart, describing both as deep (specifically in regards to craftiness and deception).

Fourth, the heart is pictured as the seat of will, purpose, and determination. In I Samuel 14:7 Jonathan’s armor-bearer tells Jonathan to do whatever was within his heart. The thoughts of his heart are described in verse six, and the point to be stressed here is that Jonathan was being urged to do what he had already determined and purposed to do.

Fifth and final, the heart is the seat of intelligence. The heart is described in Isaiah 10:7 as having the ability to think, reason, and purpose to do certain things.

So then, the heart makes up our entire inner being and can refer at times to our whole being, and it relates to several areas of our lives. First, it is the seat of our intellectual and mental life. The heart is the origin of all thoughts (Hebrews 4:12) and evil words proceed from it (Matthew 15:19). It is also the place in which we should hide the Word of God so that we would not sin against Him (Psalm 119:11). Second, the heart would be the seat of our emotional life. This is usually the usage of which we think when we hear the word heart. The heart loves (Deuteronomy 6:5), sorrows (Romans 9:2), rejoices (Psalm 104:15), desires (Psalm 37:4) and manifests many other various emotions. Thirdly, the heart can also will to do things. It can purpose or will things to happen (2 Corinthians 9:7). It can choose to do things (Exodus 7:23). It can also be turned aside or against (Exodus 14:5), it can seek out (Deuteronomy 4:29), and it can harden itself as well as be hardened (Hebrews 4:7).

The observations listed above, from the Scripture references specifically in the Old Testament regarding the Hebrew word levav would then support our modern-day view of the mind, will, and emotions as making up the heart today. In concluding this primary observation on the heart I will observe in the next article the state and condition of the heart of man, followed in the third article by what conclusions and solutions the Bible provides.

Footnotes

[1] An excellent article to aid one in the study of this Hebrew term and its cognates and synonyms is “Aiming the Mind: A Key to Godly Living” by George Zemek in Grace Theological Journal 5 (1984): 205-27, emphasis on heart is page 210. For a treatment of heart in the New Testament, see the article “The Meaning of Heart in the New Testament” also in Grace Theological Journal 12 (1971):36–45.

[2] Luc, Alex in The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis vol. 2, ed. by Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), #4213. Hereafter NIDOTTE.

[3] The following lists were developed from the NIDOTTE vol. 2; Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament vol. 2, ed. by Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 638-42; Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament vol. 1, ed. by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1980), #1071; The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, ed. by F. Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 523-25.

[4] Delitzsch, Franz, Commentary on the Old Testament vol. 5, Psalms, trans. by Francis Bolton (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 562.

[5] See James Barr’s Semantics of Biblical Language (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1961), pages 35ff. for a full discussion of parallelism in the Hebrew language.