Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Genesis 2:6 opens with the word 'ed, commonly translated as "mist" or 
"inundation." 

The last translation, alluding to the flooding of Mesopotamian plains, relies 
on the Akkadian edu, "flood." Ancients knew that floods are related to rains; 
2:5 states that there was no rain yet, and the meaning "flood" is thus 
unlikely. Flood is associated with destruction, not creation. Hebrew has an 
attested word for "flood," mabul, etymologically linked to iaval (to flow), 
and sharing root cell with mebucha (confusion), mavo' (intrusion), mevusa 
(trampling), and mevuka (desolation).

Egyptian reportedly has a word i3d.t meaning "dew." Interpretations of edu 
and i3d.t, however, themselves rely on the Hebrew 'ed, and are tentative. 
Notwithstanding that caveat, Akkadian edu and Egyptian i3d.t may have common 
semantic. The Akkadian word could equally well mean "cataclysm" or 
"overhaul." "Dew" is also a return of water.

That Hebrew borrowed an Akkadian or Egyptian word without converting it to 
three-letter root is unusual. Steinberg reconstructs 'ud (to turn) from 'eid 
(calamity), 'ud (firebrand; charred from all sides), and 'odot (because; 
Russian, by way of). The sense of "turn" could be behind 'i as misfortune 
(change), jackal (dodging animal), and island (wrapped by sea).

The only other instance of 'ed in Tanakh is in Job 36:27-28, "For he would 
pile the drops of water; they would percolate [as] rain *for its return* 
which the clouds would pour down." The common translation of l'edo as "from 
his [divine] vapor" presumes that the ancient writer equalized mist with 
clouds. Moreover, the laborious "his vapor" ignores that "his" is not used in 
the context for more important things, like water and rain, and that the 
immediate antecedent for 3ms suffix is "rain." The translation "vapor" also 
runs into a problem of preposition le, which it very unusually renders 
"from." 36:28 starts with "which"; if 'ed is a noun, it should be the 
antecedent, yet, vapor cannot be plausibly poured down.

The meaning of 'ed seems to be "turn, change."



Vadim Cherny