A Study on the Dual Form of Mayim, Water

In biblical Hebrew, a pair of an object is spelled with the distinctive dual form, taking a particular ending (-ayim). For example, a pair of eyes is spelled einayim, and a pair of hands, yadayim. On the other hand, there are some words spelled in the dual form that are hard to understand as a pair, such as mayim (water), shamayim (sky, heaven), Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), and Mitzrayim (Egypt). In general, books on grammar do not explain that these words mean an actual pair or have their origin as a pair. However, I would now like to suggest that the spelling of mayim (water), in particular, is closely associated with its original meaning as a pair. To support this argument, the Creation story in the Bible together with that in Enuma Elish will be examined.

Not every word in the dual form has the meaning of a pair. For example, many place names take the dual form, although they do not have a dual meaning. The best examples are Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) and Mitzrayim (Egypt). When we note that Yerushalam in the Masoretic text is read as Yerushalayim (e.g., I Kgs. 12:18), that “Samaria” is spelled Shamrayin in Aramaic but called Shomron in Hebrew, and that Mitzrayim is Mtzrm in Phoenician, we may conclude that these place names do not actually denote a pair: they are simply transliterations from foreign languages.¹ By and large, mayim and shamayim are explained in a similar way, although they are never used as place names and are always presented with a distinctive clarification. Another popular explanation has it that mayim and shamayim are examples of the so-called “local extension plural” with a masculine plural ending. This plural is specifically employed to indicate abundance, plurality or locality of a singular noun (e.g., meromim in Isa. 33:16). Based on this, mayim and shamayim mean water and sky abundantly extended in a certain place. Gesenius’s grammar offers good examples of such usage, but as an explanation for mayim and shamayim it is dubious.² The examples of local extension plurals given by Gesenius are all standard nouns with regular plural endings, such as the masculine –im and the feminine –ot ending. However, it should be noted that mayim and shamayim do not occur in the singular, as there is no evidence whatsoever of mai and shamai singular forms.³

One rarely finds it claimed that the dual form of mayim has something to do with that word possessing an indigenous dual meaning.⁴ Given that the two words have clear dual-sounding pronunciations and dual-form spellings, they may well have been received as dual in their actual linguistic practices. The established form of words does not occur regardless of their practical use in real communications, verbal or written. These dual forms were what ancient people used in their daily life when referring to water and the sky. They understood water or sky to be a duality.

The Duality of Water Implied in the Creation Story of Genesis

Tehom in the creation story of Genesis 1 is generally taken to be the watery “deep”:⁵ Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep (tehom); and the spirit (or a wind) of God hovered over the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2).

In the design of “chaos-order,” widely attested in many creation stories of ancient Western Asia,⁶ the above passage duly portrays a state of chaos. Chaos is thus expected to be followed by “order,” which is realized in “creation,” as narrated in Genesis 1. The chaos is very much associated with “water,” and it represents the fear and anarchy featured in the region’s many myths. The subsequent passage (verses 3-5) tells how light and darkness were made on the first day of creation, while verse 6 mentions water once again: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.

Thereafter, in verses 7-8, the waters were split into the waters above and below the expanse (raki’a); later, on the second day, the expanse separating the waters came to be called shamayim (sky). In verses 9-10 the water below the sky was rearranged to form sea and dry land, “the earth.” Through these passages we may rightly visualize water and soil all mixed up before Creation. Set in the design of “chaos-order,” the muddy space was subsequently divided to expose a new substance, the earth, on which the terrestrial creatures might live.

Nations of antiquity regarded the expanse called shamayim (sky) as a kind of dome supporting the water above so that it would not leak and collapse. That is why some passages in the Bible variously describe the expanse as the pillars of heaven (Job 26:11) and the foundations of heaven (II Sam. 22:8). It seems probable that the dome was also understood to be hard and transparent, like a sheet of glass or a space packed with air. Ancient folk might therefore have believed that the dome was pushing hard against the water above and the water below, which once formed a single body but were now split as a “pair.”⁷

The primitive concept of water as a pair is well illustrated in the literary structure of Genesis 1, where the Seven Days of Creation narrative follows a well-known parallel arrangement:⁸ Day 1 (Light) corresponds to Day 4 (Luminaries); Day 2 (Expanse) corresponds to Day 5 (Birds and Fish); Day 3 (Earth) corresponds to Day 6 (Animals and Men); and Day 7 stands alone as Rest.

A comparison of these two columns shows the imagination of ancient people embedded in the record of the Creation story. It is particularly interesting to note how the “expanse” corresponds to the “birds and fish.” Ancient people might well have seen a correspondence between the birds above and the fish below, since both were living in the same substance, water, though divided in two by the expanse. The birds were visualized “swimming” with their wings in the water above, just as the fish swam below in the sea. For the ancients, the sky’s color was blue like that of the ocean, because the water above was seen through the expanse. Hence, Ezekiel 1:26 describes the color of the expanse, when looked upon, as that of sapphire. And since there is water above the sky, some passages in the Bible declare that the water above may rain down or pour out in a deluge when the window in heaven is opened: all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened (Gen. 7:11; see also Gen. 8:2 and Isa. 24:18).

Describing what happened on the very first day of the Flood, the passage quoted above tells of the windows in heaven opening and releasing water from above, which also bursts forth below when the fountains of the deep break apart. Clearly, the waters above and below the expanse are juxtaposed as a pair.⁹ This is also illustrated in Proverbs 8:27-28:¹⁰ When He established the heavens, I was there; when He set a circle upon the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when the fountains of the deep showed their might.

In conclusion, the literary evidence so far demonstrates that the waters above and below were understood as a pair that was originally one body but separated later into two.

The Duality of Water Implied in the Creation Story of Enuma Elish

Enuma Elish, the most complete creation story we have from ancient Mesopotamia, tells how Marduk defeated Tiamat, the goddess of the sea, and made the sky out of her corpse. Interestingly, it is said that Marduk clove the body of Tiamat in two: “He split her like a shellfish¹¹ into two parts; Half of her he set up and made the sky as a covering” (Tab IV 137-8); “. . . and he stationed watchmen; He ordered them not to let her waters escape” (Tab IV 139-140).

We see here that the sky, made from half of Tiamat’s body, is water, since water is the very substance of Tiamat, goddess of the sea. This idea parallels Genesis 1, where water is placed above the expanse.¹² It is noteworthy that the water in the sky, half of her body, must be guarded to prevent a leakage. For the ancients, water leaking from heaven was the explanation for rain falling from above.¹³ They may have supposed that mismanagement of the sky could bring about a leakage of water, and that this would result in a terrible, chaotic flood, probably with the fountains of the deep bursting forth, as in Genesis 7:11. They feared the revival of Tiamat, goddess of the sea and the emblem of chaos, since a coalescence of the waters above and below would reunite the two halves of her body.

Enuma Elish parallels Genesis 1, since both describe the waters/Tiamat’s substance being split in two and placed above and below the expanse as a pair. Some argue, in fact, that the name “Tiamat” is linguistically associated with tehom in Genesis 1:2.¹⁴ This shows that in ancient times it was customary for people living in Mesopotamia to view water and the sky as dualities. It is worth noting that Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), in his commentary to Gen. 1:6, explains that the Bible uses the term raki’a “based on the belief in higher waters” that was widespread in antiquity, even though in later times the belief in a raki’a separating the lower and higher waters became “obsolete and forgotten” and “the term raki’a itself became obsolete.”¹⁵

Conclusion

In ancient Israelite verbal and written communications, mayim (water) must clearly have been pronounced and written as “dual,” and this practice would have been closely associated with a belief that the waters were divided in two as a pair. This idea was popularly circulated in the cosmologies of both the Israelites and their neighbors.

The word shamayim (sky, heaven), which is closely associated with water in the cosmologies and takes the same intriguing dual ending, could be explained in the same manner. A point of interest here is the fact that the words denoting “sky” in the Semitic languages are all spelled by prefixing s/sh to the words meaning “water” in general.¹⁶ Simply understood, for example, shamayim in Hebrew or Aramaic and šamū in Akkadian could be seen as a term combining “of/one of which” (ša) and “waters” (mayim/mū). One might therefore assume that the sky was “one of the waters/of the waters.” Or, as Gerardo Sachs maintains, since the Hebrew letter shin “placed before a three-letter root extends the underlying idea to the utmost,” sha-mayim is the superlative of mayim, which suggests that there was water above the sky.¹⁷ This kind of idea, though proposed by some, is usually rejected. J. A. Soggin criticizes such a notion as a conceit of popular etymology that takes advantage of the assonance of the words.¹⁸ However, I would contend that popular etymology is in fact a sensible way to figure out the development of a word circulated, verbally or literally, among primitive peoples. As for those fundamental terms, water and sky, their development could have been fostered by the utterly practical linguistic exercises of the common people in their understanding of a word’s form, whatever the rules of grammar might say. A prime example discussed here is mayim (water), which ancient folk clearly perceived and articulated as a pair.