Sleep: an Aspect of Jewish Anthropology

Abstract

Two observations should be made by way of introduction. (1) It is important to realise that the Old Testament references to sleep and other related matters are not very numerous. Not only so but they are purely incidental. That does not mean that they are unimportant, but it is a warning against making hasty deductions, or attempting to formulate definitive conclusions regarding the Hebrew attitude to sleep. (2) It is salutary to remember that even in our day there is still no one theory of sleep that commands the unanimous assent of psychologists or neurologists. In this region the experts are still in the realm of conjecture. Sleep is still the crux in physiology and psychology. Nothing better than hypotheses have been offered to explain it. If we keep this in mind we shall be prepared to find that for the Hebrews too sleep was a mystery. It was not, however, an entrance to the realm of the weird and the uncanny as it was for other ancient peoples. There are three roots used in Hebrew for sleep-num, yasen, and rddham. Properly speaking nzmn means to be drowsy or to slumber; ydsen signifies to sleep; while rddham is used to describe a heavy or deep sleep; and in spite of some overlapping the differences in meaning which these three roots convey are observed in the Old Testament. See, e.g., Ps. cxxi 4, Is. v 27, Jb. xxxiii 15. Cf. also the Ugaritic Text Krt. i 31 ff., where sleep and drowsiness are distinguished. Nzm describes an altogether lighter form of sleep than that implied byyasen or rddham. Tenmdh answers to what the modern neurologist describes as the pre-dormitum stage of sleep; i.e., the period that precedes sleep proper when the flow of thought becomes modified. As conscious thought detaches itself increasingly from volition the sleeper slips imperceptibly into what the Old Testament calls sendh, and, on occasion, into tardemdh where the flow of thought continues in dreams and figments of the imagination.