D2-7: In Biblical Times, The ‘Heart’ Was NOT Considered To Be The Seat of Our Emotions

“But Sichon king of Heshbon would not let us pass through his territory, because Adonai your God had hardened his spirit and made him stubborn, so that he could hand him over to you, as is the case today.”-Deuteronomy 2:30

Does God interfere with the freewill of men?

I bring this question up because in my last post I talked about how God Himself hardened the hearts of Pharaoh and Sichon king of Heshbon with the implication being that once that happened…

….even if these men had wanted to repent, they would not have been able to.

There’s something important you need to understand about the word “heart” as it is used in the Bible.

In the Bible, this word actually has a totally different meaning than how we think about it today.

In ancient times including when Yeshua walked the earth, the heart was NOT considered to be the place where our emotions or will came from.

Nor was it considered to be the place where the spirit dwelled.

Back in those days, the heart was thought to function they way we believe the brain functions today.

In other words, the heart was considered to be the seat of both our conscious and unconscious intellect.

That’s right.

According to the ancients, the heart was the organ where all of our logical thinking processes took place.

If that’s the case, how in the world did we come up with the idea that the heart is where our emotions come from?

Well, historically speaking, we got it from the Roman Empire Hellenists who came on the scene long AFTER the time of Yeshua and Paul.

Yup.

It was the Hellenists who gave us the idea that the heart was the seat of all our emotions including where our feelings of erotic love resided.

Before that, our emotions were believed to come from our liver and kidneys.

For example, before the Hellenists came on the scene, “love” was considered to be a form of TAKING ACTION to help somebody.

But now “love” has been turned into just another one of our emotions.

I’m not kidding.

This is documented historical fact.

A fact the gentile church has chosen to ignore for hundreds of years.

You know that famous proverb?

The one that says, “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding“.

We’ve been misunderstanding that verse all of our lives.

It does not mean to throw logical thinking out the window and just a make a gut-level decision to surrender to the Lord in the hopes that everything will work out.

Nope, it means to actually trust the Lord with all of our MIND.

Trusting God is not just an emotional decision.

From a high-level intellectual or analytical perspective, it is also the most sound decision we could ever make.

Remember this.

From here on out, whenever you come across the word “heart” in your Bible, take a pen, cross it out, and write the word “mind” instead.

That will give you the proper understanding of what the text is trying to communicate.