– It is used in the plural to indicate life, being soon separated, according to the Semitic mentality, into superior waters (rain) and inferior waters (sea):
Gen 1 :6 : God said: “Let a expanse be made between the waters, and separate it one from the other”.
– Examples of water in the proper sense are:
Ex 17,5-6 : You will strike the rock and water will flow from it: so the people will be able to drink.
Num 20,8-9 : You will make water flow from the rock and you will give drink to the assembly and their flocks.
Deuteronomy 8:15 : Barren land without water, where he made water flow for you from the hardest rock.
Ps 77,15-16 : He watered them with torrents of water. From the stone he made rivulets flow, and water flowed like rivers.
Ps 104 : 41 : He opened the rock and water gushed out like a river flowing through the desert.
– From the book of Exodus, the passage through the waters of the Red Sea came to have the religious connotation of liberation from the oppression of enemy peoples. By extension, the waters became synonymous with the evil from which Yahweh had saved the chosen people:
Ex 14–15 : Stretch out your hand over the sea, and the waters will roll back over the Egyptians, their chariots and their horsemen.
– The crossing of the Jordan River, narrated in Josué, is interpreted by the author with the same meaning. Also Noah, his family and a couple of each animal are saved from the waters by the Lord:
Jos 3: As soon as the priests […] have touched […] the waters of the Jordan, they will be cut off.
Gen 6-7 : The waters flooded everything with violence, and covered the whole earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters.
Ps 28 :3 : The voice of the Lord is heard over the waters!
Ps 31,6 : When many waters overflow, they will not reach him.
– In opposition to the waters of the curse, which shelter mysterious beings in their abysses, God is the source of living, pure water and where this water passes brings blessings and life:
Ps 1,3 : He is like a tree planted on the banks of flowing waters: it bears fruit […] its foliage will never wither.
Jr 17,8 : It resembles a tree planted near water […]; if the heat comes, she will not fear.
Jer 2:13 : He has abandoned me, the fountain of living water, to dig out cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Ez 36,25-26 : I will pour on you pure waters, which will cleanse you from all your filthiness.
Ps 1 :3 : He is like a tree planted on the banks of flowing waters.
Jer 17.8 : It resembles a tree planted by water.
Ez 47,1-12 : Behold, water gushed from under the threshold of the building, towards the East.
– In the NT, water maintains the expanded spiritual sense to indicate purification by baptism:
John 3 :5: Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever is not born again of water and the Spirit will not be able to enter the Kingdom of God.
Jn 4,7-15 : If you knew […] who […] says to you, Give me a drink, […] you would ask for it yourself and he would give you living water.
Rom 6:4 : We were therefore buried with him in his death by baptism so that […] we too might live a new life.
1Pt 3,20-21 : While the ark was being built, in which few people, that is, only eight, were saved through water.
– See ABYSS, ABLUTION, BAPTISM, SEA.
