The Waters Beneath the Words
Why Scripture Speaks in Floods, Fountains, and Blood
There is a question that must be asked before any serious reader dares to call his work “exegesis.” It is not a question of doctrine, nor grammar, nor even theology—though it touches all three.
It is this:
Why is this word being used?
Why this image?
Why this phrase—and not another?
This question is rarely asked with the seriousness it deserves, particularly within what I often call Western Common Theology (WCT). WCT is not a formal school; it is a habit of mind. It is the unexamined assumption that Scripture speaks in our language, on our terms, with our symbolic instincts intact. It is the quiet confidence that reading the Bible in English—transliterated, flattened, de-mythologized—is sufficient to grasp what the text is doing, not merely what it is saying.
But Scripture is not written to modern Western ears.
It is written from a world—and into a world—that no longer exists.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the biblical language of water.
The World Where Water Was Not Assumed
To a modern reader, water is utility. It flows at the turn of a handle. It is filtered, chlorinated, and endlessly available. We speak of it casually—water under the bridge, watered down, mouth-watering—as metaphor stripped of consequence.
But to the ancient Near East, water was life itself, held precariously. Survival clustered around rivers. Civilization rose and fell with wells, rains, floods, and droughts. Water was not merely consumed; it was feared, awaited, celebrated, and interpreted.
The Israelites understood this deeply. Their history is shaped by water that kills and water that saves.
They passed safely through the Red Sea while death closed behind them.
They drank from stone in the wilderness (Exod. 17; Num. 20).
They were promised a land “with streams and springs” as a sign of divine blessing (Deut. 8; 11).
Thus YHWH could name Himself not merely as a giver of water, but as “the fountain of living water” (Jer. 2:13).
This is not poetic excess. It is theological precision.
Water Before Israel: The Older Mythic Grammar
To grasp the full weight of Scripture’s language, we must descend further—past Sinai, past Egypt—into the shared symbolic bloodstream of the ancient world.
In Babylon and Egypt, water was not neutral. It was cosmic.
In Babylon, the New Year festival (Akitu) reenacted creation itself. Immersion in water symbolized regression into the primordial state—the dissolution of form before rebirth. As Mircea Eliade observed, water always bears a double meaning: death and regeneration. It dissolves, and therefore it renews. It kills, and therefore it gives life.
This belief was not metaphorical. Humanity itself was thought to arise from the waters. Floods were not disasters by default; they were often omens of return, signs that the cosmos was being re-fertilized.
Egypt shared this logic. The Nile’s annual flooding marked the rhythm of existence—Akhet (inundation), Peret (growth), Shemu (harvest and drought). Even the word for “year” carried connotations of rejuvenation. Osiris himself was bound to this cycle: slain, cast into the Nile, and reborn.
Water was memory.
Water was judgment.
Water was resurrection.
When the Waters Turn Red
Not all floods were welcomed.
Certain floods—mīlu floods—were feared. When the river turned dark red, it signaled plague, chaos, divine hostility. The blood-colored water was not unfamiliar; it was already a theological warning within Egyptian cosmology.
Which brings us to Exodus.
“I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.”
—Exodus 7:17
Modern readers often miss the force of this sign. They imagine shock at the grotesque. But the Egyptians would not have been startled merely by redness.
They would have understood the message.
Red water meant Osiris is slain.
Red water meant chaos is unleashed.
Red water meant the gods have been judged.
This was not spectacle. It was theological warfare.
YHWH was not frightening Pharaoh with a parlor trick. He was declaring sovereignty over the symbolic heart of Egypt’s cosmos. He was demonstrating that the God of Israel commands the waters—not as myth, not as cycle, but as Lord.
God Against the Waters—God Over the Gods
This pattern is not isolated.
Genesis opens with God mastering the chaotic deep (tehom), the same abyss associated with Tiamat, the primeval sea-dragon of Babylon. Creation itself is framed as victory over the waters, not emergence from them.
The Exodus plagues continue the theme: each sign dismantles a foreign theology and replaces it with truth. The Nile, the sun, fertility, life—each exposed as derivative, not divine.
YHWH does not merely out-perform other gods.
He redefines reality itself.
Why This Matters for Reading Scripture
When Scripture speaks of living water, it is not offering a sentimental metaphor. It is invoking an entire cosmology and then overthrowing it.
Living water is not cyclical.
It does not dissolve and regenerate endlessly.
It flows from God, not from chaos.
This is why Jesus does not offer water that returns you to primordial possibility—but water that leads to eternal life.
And this is why exegesis must always ask the dangerous question:
Why this word? Why here? Why this image—against all others?
Scripture is not merely inspired prose. It is subversive theology, written in the language of gods to dethrone them.
Conclusion: Learning to Hear the Flood
Western readers often stand ankle-deep in these waters and assume they understand the current. But the river is deeper than it looks. Beneath every phrase lies a world—its fears, its hopes, its gods, and its judgments.
To read Scripture faithfully is not merely to translate words, but to enter the world where those words were dangerous.
Only then can we hear what God is actually saying—
and why He chose to say it this way.
YES thank you! Genesis 1 & Exodus plagues do not simply move a chess piece on the cosmic board … they wipe all the other competing pieces (stories, myths, narratives, gods…) off the table at once. Kudos for capturing that forceful dynamic that our modern more gentle or philosophical readings miss.