Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Moshe Shulman <mshulman AT ix.netcom.com>]

At 11:12 PM 11/20/00 -0500, Michael DePangher wrote:
> Dear Friends,
> I am just learning Biblical Hebrew, so this may turn out to be just an
> embarassing revelation of my ignorance.
> The idea occurred to me that shamayim might be a compound word of sha (?)
> + mayim (waters) in a manner similar to ish (man) and ishah (woman) with
> woman (Gen 2:23 -- she shall be called "ishah" because she was taken out
> of "ish").  The idea would be something like "heaven" will be called
> "shamayim" because it was taken out of the "mayim" in Gen 1:6-8.  However,

Actually there is a Midrash that 'shamayim' is a contraction of 'aish' 
(fire) and 'mayim' (water.


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