Tehom
/təˈhoʊm/noun
A Hebrew term meaning the primordial deep or subterranean ocean, especially in the Hebrew Bible.
Did you know?Tehom is closely related to the Babylonian Tiamat tradition, although scholars debate whether the Hebrew term was directly borrowed or inherited from an older Semitic root.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Semitic
Proto-Semitic
*tihām-
“Sea or deep waters; a reconstructed ancestral Semitic term”
2nd Millennium BCE
Akkadian
tiāmtu
“Sea, especially the cosmic sea associated with Tiamat”
Late 2nd Millennium BCE
Ugaritic
thm
“The deep or depths of the sea”
10th–5th Century BCE
Biblical Hebrew
תְּהוֹם (təhôm)
“The primeval deep, subterranean waters, or ocean depths”
3rd–2nd Century BCE
Koine Greek
ἄβυσσος (abyssos)
“The abyss or bottomless deep, used in the Septuagint to translate related concepts”
Modern English
English
tehom
“A transliterated Hebrew term used in biblical studies for the primordial deep”