Mayim Mayim: וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם מַיִם

One verse of Isaiah, five words long, which almost every Israeli learns as a circle dance before they ever learn it as scripture. The dance is danced at school, at weddings and at every folk-dance evening in the country, and the steps mime the words: the circle runs in toward the centre on the word for water and back out again. For a learner this is the cheapest possible sentence to own — five words, one of which you already know, and a melody that will not let you forget the stress pattern.

♫ Guitar suggestion, hover a chord to explore or change

♪ Tuning E A D G B E

Key: Dm · 3 chords used · Dm · Gm · A

126 BPM · 4/4 · the circle dance starts slow and accelerates until the last chorus is a sprint · four chords, and the whole song is one biblical verse repeated · to reset the chord panel:

1 · the verse

וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם מַיִם בְּשָׂשׂוֹן מִמַּעַיְנֵי הַיְשׁוּעָה

וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם

ush-AV-tem

and you shall draw (2mp)

מַיִם

MA-yim

water

בְּשָׂשׂוֹן

be-sa-SON

with joy

מִמַּעַיְנֵי

mi-ma-ai-NEI

from the springs of

הַיְשׁוּעָה

hai-shu-A

the salvation

| Dm | Gm A | Dm |

And you shall draw water with joy from the springs of salvation.

Five words, and four of them are worth taking apart. The verb וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם (ush-av-tem) carries its subject inside it — the ending is what makes it "you", plural, so no separate pronoun appears. מַיִם (ma-yim) looks singular and is not: the -ayim ending is the dual, the same ending as in the words for eyes, hands and Jerusalem. מִמַּעַיְנֵי (mi-ma-ai-nei) is a construct chain, "the springs OF", which is why it cannot stand alone and leans on the word after it. And הַיְשׁוּעָה (hai-shu-a) is the definite article swallowing its vowel into the yod, which is why it sounds like ha-y and not ha-ye.

♫ Singing notes

The chorus everyone actually sings is the word for water four times, then "hey!", then the last three words of the verse. The verse itself is the quiet part.
Start around 100 BPM and let it climb. The dance is built on the acceleration, and a version that stays at one tempo feels wrong to anyone who has danced it.
The stress is on the last syllable of every word except מַיִם (ma-yim), which is stressed on the first. That one exception is what gives the chorus its bounce, so do not let the tune flatten it.
Sung in a circle, everyone holds hands, so nobody is holding a guitar. If you are playing, you are the one person standing still.

♦ About this song

The text

Isaiah 12:3, the close of a short song of thanksgiving that ends the first movement of the book. The chapter is two hymns; this verse is the hinge between them. Nothing in the Hebrew is unusual — which is exactly why it makes a good first verse to learn by heart.

Water in the dry half of the year

The image is a well, not a river. In a country where the rain stops in April and does not return until October, drawing water is not a metaphor that needs explaining, and the verse pairs it with the word for joy rather than for relief. The dance leans on that: the circle rushes inward as though toward the water itself.

What to be careful about

The melody and the choreography are twentieth-century and are not reproduced here; what this page carries is the biblical verse, which is public. If you want the tune, listen to it — it is on every Israeli folk-dance recording ever made, and hearing it once is worth more than any notation.