What Does the Bible Say?

"In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” - Genesis 3:19

"You make mortal man go back to crushed matter, and you say: “GO back, YOU sons of men.” - Psalm 90:3

"All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust." - Ecclesiastes 3:20

"For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. . . . 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going." Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10

"His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; In that day his thoughts do perish." - Psalm 146:4

Discussion

Do we cease to exist at death or does part of live on? When ort spirit goes out, does it go out like a lamp or candle and the hope of living or being resurrected returns to God, or does some part of a human remain living?

“There is no dichotomy [division] of body and soul in the O[ld] T[estament]. The Israelite saw things concretely, in their totality, and thus he considered men as persons and not as composites. The term nepeš [neʹphesh], though translated by our word soul, never means soul as distinct from the body or the individual person. . . . The term [psy·kheʹ] is the N[ew] T[estament] word corresponding with nepeš. It can mean the principle of life, life itself, or the living being.”—New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. XIII, pp. 449, 450.

“The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accordingly nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture.”—The Jewish Encyclopedia (1910), Vol. VI, p. 564.