Why Shamayim as Sky
Shamayim exists only in the plural, and so does mayim, which appears one verse later. Kabbalists read esh combined with mayim; Brown-Driver-Briggs reads a shafel prefix meaning 'gives water', the source of rainfall. Setting that beside the Hebrew shin that intensifies a root, and beside a sky that looks blue for the same reason the sea does, gives shamayim as the superlative of water.
Gerardo G. Sachs from Argentina recently published his book Ansichten/Opinions in Germany containing over 50 articles on Judaic themes.
GERARDO SACHS
The Indo-European languages use both the singular word “sky” in the plural word “skies.” The singular form means the zone in which the celestial bodies appear, from the solar system to the farthest star. The plural form belongs to the poetic vocabulary to connote a region. It is also used as a translation for the Hebrew shamayim, a word that exists only in the plural form. It first appears in Genesis 1 (v. 1), as does mayim [water] that also exists only in the plural form (v. 2).
Kabbalists explain shamayim as being composed of esh [fire] combined with mayim. A different etymology is given in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, as sha combined with mayim. The sha is a grammatical form of shafel indicating “gives water” – that is, the source of rainfall.
There are many words in Hebrew in which the letter “shin” placed before a three-letter root extends the underlying idea to the utmost. For example, “gush” means “grouping”; with the prefix shin it becomes “shagosh” that means “agitator.” “Ger” means “stranger”; with the prefix shin it becomes “shager”, that means “to send.” The root “abad” connotes “work”; with the prefix shin it becomes “shib’ud” for heavy labor or slavery.
Water itself is colorless, but it can reflect the refracted sunlight that makes the air above look blue. This makes the water of the sea or a lake looks blue. Early man could observe the apparently blue sky and the apparently blue water, and suppose that there was water over the sky. Consequently, in the account of Creation, first comes the creation of light (energy) and then comes the creation of “rakia” as a huge dome that separates the waters above from those beneath. Since there are two waters, the word employed is always the plural mayim. At the same time, what appeared to be an immensity of water over the dome was called sha-mayim, the superlative form of mayim.
Gerardo G. Sachs, of Argentina, recently published his book Ansichten/Opinions in Germany, containing over 50 articles on Judaic themes.
Cite this article
Gerardo G. Sachs. "Why Shamayim as Sky." Jewish Bible Quarterly 34, no. 2 (April – June 2006).
Gerardo G. Sachs. "Why Shamayim as Sky." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 2, 2006.