the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

ים

Although it should be noted that affixes in ancient Hebrew are not well understood, the ים suffix is one of the more consistent examples. Pronounced “im”, this suffix is appended to a root word in order to pluralize the word. The suffix im always indicates a plural, and therefore a group. In a handful of cases the “grouping” itself is the salient feature and the word ending in 'im' is in fact a numerative device resulting in a multiplication of the root number, as discussed further here.

Aside from these distinctly numeric cases, the suffix is more generally applied to not merely a group of any random objects, but a group of living beings. The new word with the suffix included references the a group of living entities. These beings are sometimes animals and most often humans. Essentially, if “im” is added to the end of <X>, then the new word (“<X>im”) means “The <X> people”, where X describes some characteristic of the people. The 'im suffix implies a plural personification.

As already mentioned, there are a few words ending in the im suffix which appear to refer to animals.

In the case of humans, we see the root appearing on words indicating a certain profession or specific skill. It also appears in instances indicating what we might think of as “nationality”, normally indicating where this group of people are from and by extension what culture they are part of.

Examples of occupations include:

Examples of nationality include:

Clearly, the 'im' suffix brings with it an implication of a certain specific culture, skills, and origin.

There are many words ending with im which seem to be neither human, nor animal, but some other type of living beings.

Perhaps the most well known of these is alehim (aka Elohim) - a group of intelligent entities prevalent in the Hebrew texts from the very first verse, and never straying far from the narrative. However, it is not entirely clear if the alehim are human, superhuman, or something else entirely There are a number of other beings in this category, many of whom are entirely overlooked, and some of whom are quite misconstrued in traditional interpretations. These include the kerobim and serepim, and many more.

Interestingly, most of these words are simple etymological compounds. That is, they use a root word with a meaning that is well established and clear, then they add the im suffix, to create a plural personification based on the known attribute.

In some cases, the root word is an adjective. These belay a very straightforward pattern, for example hemed “Desirable” + im → hemedim “the Desirable Ones”.

In other cases, the root word is a verb, so when combined with im, the verb appears to take on an adjectival gerundive form. An example of this is aor “light” + im → aorim/arim “the Shining Ones”.

Some are built on a noun root. An easy example is her “mountain” + im → herim “the Mountain People”. This example implies a group of people who live in the mountains. Some noun examples are somewhat less straightforward in their implications.

Later we will make a list of words using this suffix, but for now use the backlinks to this page for a dynamic list, each of which is discussed on their own page.