Letter to the Editor: The Meaning of Mayim

Sir,

In the recent issue of JBQ, Min Suc Kee suggests that the meaning of mayim is “closely associated with its original meaning as a pair” (Min Suc Kee, “A Study on the Dual Form of Mayim, Water,” JBQ 40:3 (2012), p. 183). The author finds support for this thesis in the Creation story of the Bible and that in Enuma Elish. It seems to me that Min Suc Kee’s suggestion is fundamentally wrong, because it assumes that the meaning of a most basic word of any language, “water,” referring to a natural necessity for human existence, was originally crafted and shaped to reflect notions in some creation legends.

When and how the original language from which Hebrew evolved actually developed is not known. Jewish tradition maintains that Hebrew was the first language spoken by mankind. Whatever the case, it seems to me that the term for “water” was so important to humans that it was among the first to be formed in any vocabulary. Also, being so essential to human survival, this word probably did not admit any ambiguity. It is therefore difficult to accept the notion that the term had to wait for legends of creation to develop before it came into being. Obviously, these legends could not have been created without first having the term “water.”

Min Suc Kee can certainly claim that “the literary evidence so far demonstrates that the waters above and below [the firmament] were understood as a pair that was originally one body but separated later into two” (p. 186). This understanding, however, does not mean that the duality is reflected in the word mayim. Thus, the claim that “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” has not been demonstrated and cannot be demonstrated. Min Suc Kee’s understanding of shamaym as consisting of (sh)a + maym/mu = “one of the waters/of the waters” gives an indeterminate term.¹

My personal view is that mayim was perhaps derived from the onomatopoeic yam (“lake” or “wide stretch of a river”), connoting the sound of water movement, as the root hmh (“murmur, roar”) connotes the noise of waves (Jer. 5:22, 31:35; Isa. 51:15). Notably, ham and yam are homophones. The word mayim could originally have designated “that which was brought from the sea, or river.” Although it has the form of a masculine plural, mayim is in no sense a plural. The first speakers of Hebrew, observing that water comes from heaven in the form of rain, may well have named the heavens shamaym because that was a place “where water was” (sham mayim).

Dr. Aron Pinker Silver Spring, MD