יום

Forms

יוֹם (yôm) noun, masculine, plural יָמִים^[1][3] Dual יוֹמַיִם “two days”, plural יָמִים, construct plural יְמֵי and, in poetry, יְמוֹת (Deuteronomy 32:7, Psalm 90:15).^[4][5] The inscriptions write it ym, plural ymm, and kym “today”.^[6][7]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *yawm- (“day”), with the diphthong /aw/ contracted to /ô/ in Hebrew.^[3][8][9] HALOT and BDB give the cognates: Akkadian ūmu,^[10][11] Ugaritic ym,^[12] Phoenician ym, Aramaic יוֹם (yôm), Classical Syriac ܝܵܘܡܵܐ (yawmā),^[13] Arabic يَوْم (yawm),^[14] Sabaean ywm and Ge'ez ዮም (yom, “today”).^[4][5][15] The plural goes back to a short base /yam-/, as does the plural of שָׁנָה (šānâ, “year”).^[4] In the Modern South Arabian languages the same word has become the usual word for “sun”, Kogan notes.^[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun is in the Hebrew letters from Lachish and Arad, which Sáenz-Badillos dates to the 6th century BC.^[17] The Lachish letters have kym, “today”, nine times, and the Arad letters hym, bym and the plural ymm.^[7][6] Davies also reads it, after Cross, in a bowl inscription from Ḥorvat ʿUza of the mid or late 7th century.^[18] In the Bible it is found in the archaic poetry: the Song of Moses speaks of yəmôṯ ʿôlām, “the days of old” (Deuteronomy 32:7), and of yôm ʾêḏām, “the day of their calamity” (32:35).^[19][1]

Semantic evolution

HALOT orders the senses from daylight, as opposed to night, to the day of twenty-four hours, as in yôm yôm “day by day”, and to special days: the sabbath, a feast day, a day of distress, a birthday, the day of one's death, and days named after events, like “the day of Midian” (Isaiah 9:3).^[4] The prophets speak of the “day of the LORD”, which HALOT treats as eschatological.^[4] hayyôm, “the day”, means “today”, as Latin hodie comes from hoc die.^[4] In the plural the days are a span of time or a lifetime, “the days of” a king are his reign, and יָמִים alone can be a year, as in the yearly sacrifice zeḇaḥ hayyāmîm (1 Samuel 1:21).^[5][4] BDB notes that the dating of events by the day of the month is mostly Priestly and late.^[5]

The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ἡμέρα (hēméra) and, for “today”, by Ancient Greek σήμερον (sḗmeron).^[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it about 2,500 times.^[20] Klein gives “day”, “time” and “year” as its senses, and Modern Hebrew יוֹם (yom) is the word in Modern Hebrew.^[15][3] English Yom Kippur comes from the Hebrew word.^[9]

Timeline

• 6th century BC – kym “today” in the Lachish ostraca and hym, ymm in the Arad ostraca.^[17][7][6]
• Archaic Hebrew poetry – yəmôṯ ʿôlām and yôm ʾêḏām in the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:7, 35).^[19][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – 1,016 of its 2,302 occurrences are in the prose of Genesis to Kings.^[1]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it by Ancient Greek ἡμέρα (hēméra).^[21][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – about 2,500 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[22][20]

Meanings

Noun

1. day, daylight, as opposed to night.^[4][5]
2. a day of twenty-four hours; a day as a unit of time, a day's journey.^[4][5]
3. a particular day: a feast day, the sabbath, a day of distress; one's birthday or day of death.^[4]
4. (prophetic) the day of the LORD.^[4]
5. hayyôm, kayyôm: today, now.^[4]
6. (plural) a span of time; a lifetime; the reign of a king.^[4][5]
7. (plural) a year: miyyāmîm yāmîmâ “year after year”.^[5]

Word family

• יוֹמָם (yômām)

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew יוֹם (yom)^[3]

Usage notes

The Aramaic chapters of Ezra and Daniel have the same word, יוֹם, 16 times.^[1] HALOT sets apart a second יוֹם, “wind, storm” or “breath”, which it finds perhaps in Song of Songs 2:17 and in qəšēh-yôm (Job 30:25), against the usual rendering “one whose day is hard”.^[23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
2. ^ Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
3. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. יוֹם I
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. יוֹם
6. ^ a b c Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.001
7. ^ a b c Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.002
8. ^ Militarev, Alexander, et al., Semitic Etymology (database semet), The Tower of Babel (StarLing), starling.rinet.ru
9. ^ a b Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. s.v. ywm
10. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. ūmu
11. ^ von Soden, Wolfram (1965–1981), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. 1419
12. ^ del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ym I
13. ^ Sokoloff, Michael (2009), A Syriac Lexicon, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, p. 568
14. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 3064
15. ^ a b Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. יוֹם
16. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 541
17. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 77
18. ^ Davies, Graham I. (2004), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 37.007
19. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
20. ^ a b Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
21. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
22. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
23. ^ Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. יוֹם II