Hebrew word · H108

אֵד

ve'ed

mist

Appears only here and in Genesis 2:6 ('an ʾēd went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground'). Traditional meaning: 'mist, vapor'. Many modern scholars link it to Akkadian edû / id, meaning 'flood, surge of water, underground water source' or 'river'.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

mist

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Job 36:27

Range of meaning

Appears only here and in Genesis 2:6 ('an ʾēd went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground'). Traditional meaning: 'mist, vapor'. Many modern scholars link it to Akkadian edû / id, meaning 'flood, surge of water, underground water source' or 'river'. The Septuagint of Genesis 2:6 translates it 'spring' (pēgē).

Against the English

KJV, WEB: 'vapour'. BSB, NASB: 'mist'. NIV: 'streams'. ESV: 'mist', treated as God's mist. The difference matters: 'mist' points to fog or clouds; 'stream/flood' points to a body of water the rain comes from or goes into.

How it drifted

'Vapor' sounds like the physics word for water in gas form to a modern reader. Ancient Hebrew had no such concept, and the word may not even mean mist.

Used elsewhere in the period

E. A. Speiser's study of ʾēd (1955) argued for the Akkadian link ('flood, underground waters'). D. T. Tsumura's work on Genesis 2 develops this. The older Jewish and Christian tradition, through Aramaic paraphrases and the Vulgate, often takes it as 'mist' or 'spring'. The Vulgate of Job 36:27 has 'like whirlpools/floods' (ad instar gurgitum), which may reflect the 'flood' sense.

Where it appears

Genesis · 1

  1. Genesis 2:6 וְאֵ֖ד and water

    But springs welled up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Job · 1

  1. Job 36:27 לְאֵדֽוֹ׃ to mist its

    For He draws up drops of water which distill the rain from the mist,

    Here: 'To/for/from its (or his) ʾēd'. A very rare word, found elsewhere only in Genesis 2:6, and its meaning is debated: 'mist', or (from a related Akkadian word) a flow of water or flood. The little word 'to' and the ending 'his/its' can be read several ways: rain 'from his mist', 'into his flood', 'as his mist', or rain 'for its stream'.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.