Grow With Me
Grow With Me

מַיִם

mayim · water

Hebrew word · Strong’s number H4325 · appears 581 times in the Bible

What is the Strong number?Strong’s number identifies this word: use it to find the same word in other study tools.

What it means

mayim (מַיִם) is a Hebrew word of the Bible that means “water”.

In Hebrew it is always plural ("waters").

How to say it

ma·yim

Approximate pronunciation. Vowels sound as in Spanish (a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in note, u as in rule); the syllable in bold is stressed. The voice is your device's.

Its senses in the Bible

  1. Water: for drinking, of rivers or seas.
  2. Urine, the liquid waste of the body.

From Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906)

Word study

Water. In Hebrew the word exists only in the plural (“waters”), even when it refers to a little water to drink. As a euphemism it can mean urine: “the water of their feet” (2 Kings 18:27).

Historical and cultural background

Jeremiah 2:13 sets “the fountain of living waters” against “broken cisterns that cannot hold the water”: spring water against rainwater gathered in dug-out tanks.

How we translate it

“Water” 350 times, “waters” 228, “urine” 2. Since English distinguishes singular and plural, it says “water” for water to drink or wash with, and “waters” for bodies of water (the sea, the flood, the rivers). “Living waters” is kept literally, with a note, because it means running water. In 2 Kings 18:27 the translation follows what is read in the Hebrew text (“their urine”), with a note on what is written.

How it is translated

The words this translation uses for it, most frequent first.

  • water ×350
  • waters ×228
  • urine ×2
  • watering troughs ×1

Related words

Words that come from it

Words of the same family, by Strong’s numbering.

Where it appears

  • Genesis 1:2

    Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of Elohim was hovering over the surface of the waters.

  • Genesis 1:6

    And Elohim said, “Let there be a vault in the middle of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

  • Genesis 1:7

    And Elohim made the vault and separated the waters that were under the vault from the waters that were above the vault. And it was so.

  • Genesis 1:9

    And Elohim said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry ground appear.” And it was so.

  • Genesis 1:10

    And Elohim called the dry ground “Earth,” and the gathering of the waters he called “Seas.” And Elohim saw that it was good.

  • Genesis 1:20

    And Elohim said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living beings, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the vault of the heavens.”

  • Genesis 1:21

    And Elohim created the great sea monsters and every living being that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And Elohim saw that it was good.

  • Genesis 1:22

    And Elohim blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”

  • Genesis 6:17

    And I, look, I am bringing the flood of waters on the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life, from under the heavens; everything that is on the earth will perish.

  • Genesis 7:6

    And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came, waters on the earth.

  • Genesis 7:7

    And Noah went into the ark, and his sons and his wife and the wives of his sons with him, because of the waters of the flood.

  • Genesis 7:10

    And it happened after the seven days that the waters of the flood came on the earth.

  • Genesis 7:17

    And the flood was forty days on the earth; and the waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose above the earth.

  • Genesis 7:18

    And the waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark moved on the surface of the waters.

  • Genesis 7:19

    And the waters prevailed very, very much on the earth, and all the high mountains that are under all the heavens were covered.

  • Genesis 7:20

    Fifteen cubits upward the waters prevailed, and the mountains were covered.

  • Genesis 7:24

    And the waters prevailed on the earth a hundred and fifty days.

  • Genesis 8:1

    And Elohim remembered Noah and all the animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark; and Elohim made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters subsided.

  • Genesis 8:3

    And the waters receded from the earth, going and receding; and at the end of a hundred and fifty days the waters had decreased.

  • Genesis 8:5

    And the waters kept on decreasing until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

  • Genesis 8:7

    and he sent out the raven, and it went going out and returning until the waters had dried up from the earth.

  • Genesis 8:8

    And he sent out the dove from him to see whether the waters had decreased from the face of the ground.

  • Genesis 8:9

    But the dove did not find a resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of all the earth. And he reached out his hand and took her and brought her to himself into the ark.

  • Genesis 8:11

    And the dove came to him at evening time, and look, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had decreased from the earth.

  • Genesis 8:13

    And it happened in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, that the waters dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and look, the face of the ground had dried.

  • Genesis 9:11

    And I will establish my covenant with you: and never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

  • Genesis 9:15

    that I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living being of all flesh; and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

  • Genesis 16:7

    The angel of YHWH found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.

  • Genesis 18:4

    Let a little water be brought, please, and wash your feet, and rest under the tree.

  • Genesis 21:14

    Abraham rose early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and also the child, and sent her away. She went and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

  • Genesis 21:15

    When the water in the skin was used up, she threw the child under one of the bushes.

  • Genesis 21:19

    Then Elohim opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave a drink to the boy.

  • Genesis 21:25

    But Abraham reproached Abimelech about a well of water that the servants of Abimelech had seized.

  • Genesis 24:11

    He made the camels kneel outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time the women who draw water go out.

  • Genesis 24:13

    Look, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.

  • Genesis 24:17

    The servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me sip a little water from your jar.”

  • Genesis 24:32

    The man came into the house, and he unloaded the camels and gave straw and fodder to the camels and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him.

  • Genesis 24:43

    look, I am standing by the spring of water. Let it be that the young woman who comes out to draw, and to whom I say, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar,”

  • Genesis 26:18

    Isaac again dug the wells of water that they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped up after the death of Abraham; and he called them by names like the names by which his father had called them.

  • Genesis 26:19

    Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of living water.

And 541 more times.