Tightness (i.e. figuratively, trouble ); transitively, a female rival
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צָרָה (ṣārāh) means distress, trouble, adversity — the felt experience of being pressed, constricted, hemmed in. The root ṣrr carries the physical image of tightness, of being squeezed into a narrow space, and ṣārāh is the noun that names the inner experience that corresponds to that physical image: the condition of finding oneself trapped, pressed on all sides, without obvious exit.
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Full entry for צָרָה (H6869) · Open the biblical lexicon
צָרָה (ṣārāh) means distress, trouble, adversity — the felt experience of being pressed, constricted, hemmed in. The root ṣrr carries the physical image of tightness, of being squeezed into a narrow space, and ṣārāh is the noun that names the inner experience that corresponds to that physical image: the condition of finding oneself trapped, pressed on all.
The BSB source-word alignment has 73 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include of distress (12), of trouble (11), distress (6), anguish (4), and afflictions (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 35:3. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (24), Jeremiah (8), Isaiah (7), Proverbs (7).
צָרָה (ṣārāh) means distress, trouble, adversity — the felt experience of being pressed, constricted, hemmed in. The root ṣrr carries the physical image of tightness, of being squeezed into a narrow space, and ṣārāh is the noun that names the inner experience that corresponds to that physical image: the condition of finding oneself trapped, pressed on all sides, without obvious exit.
In Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish (Jon 2:2), ṣārāh appears in the opening line: 'In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.' The confession is remarkable in its theological precision: the ṣārāh did not silence the prayer, it generated it. The physical extremity — three days in the darkness of the fish, surrounded by water and kelp — became the occasion for the most explicit prayer in the book of Jonah.
This is the OT pattern of ṣārāh: it functions as a context for calling out, not as an obstacle to it. The Hebrew Bible is dense with ṣārāh-prayer: Hezekiah prays in the distress of his terminal illness (Isa 37:3), the Psalms return again and again to the cry 'in my distress I called to the Lord' (Ps 18:6; 118:5; 120:1), and the prophets understand Israel's exile as the great ṣārāh that will finally produce the return and restoration.
The theology of ṣārāh in the OT is not that God removes it before hearing, but that it is the very context in which his ear is most open. Psalm 91:15 distills it: 'He will call on me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in distress (ṣārāh), I will deliver him and honor him.'
צָרָה occurs approximately 73 times in the OT, with significant concentrations in the Psalms (the lament tradition), the narrative books (individuals in crisis), and the prophets (exile as ṣārāh). The word covers both external circumstances (siege, exile, threat) and the internal experience of anguish. It appears regularly in the phrase 'in the day of distress' (bĕyôm ṣārāh) as the moment of crisis-prayer.
I called because of my affliction to Yahweh (the Lord). He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried. You heard my voice.
The opening line of Jonah's prayer uses ṣārāh for the distress that drove the cry — literally 'from my distress I called to YHWH and he answered me.' The sequence is decisive: the ṣārāh came first, then the call, then the answer. Jonah did not pray until he was in the fish; the extremity produced the prayer. The belly of the fish becomes a figure of Sheol, of the uttermost ṣārāh, and it is precisely there that the Lord's hearing is confirmed.
In my distress I called upon the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry for His help reached His ears.
The paradigmatic ṣārāh-prayer formula: distress, cry, divine hearing. This Psalm (attributed to David's deliverance from Saul) establishes the pattern that Jonah later embodies: the ṣārāh is the stimulus for the cry, and the cry reaches the heavenly temple. The divine response in vv.7-19 is cosmically proportionate to the smallness of the individual's ṣārāh — the theophany of God coming down because one person cried out in trouble.
When he calls out to Me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.
The promise that defines the ṣārāh theology: 'I will be with him in trouble (ṣārāh).' Not 'I will remove the trouble before he calls' but 'I will be present in it.' The ṣārāh is the setting for divine companionship, not its absence. The Psalm does not promise a life without ṣārāh but the presence of God within it — the same pastoral logic as Psalm 23's dark valley.
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of distress; He cares for those who trust in Him.
Nahum's description of YHWH as a stronghold (māʿôz) in the day of ṣārāh — written about Nineveh's judgment but containing within it the positive covenant promise. The 'day of trouble' is precisely the day when God is known as a stronghold. The connection to Jonah is pointed: the same Nineveh that Jonah visited is being addressed by Nahum a generation later, and the promise of divine refuge in ṣārāh belongs to those who trust in the Lord.
How awful that day will be! None will be like it! It is the time of Jacob’s distress, but he will be saved out of it.
The great eschatological ṣārāh passage: 'a time of trouble (ṣārāh) for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it.' The prophetic trajectory of ṣārāh reaches here its ultimate register: the great national ṣārāh of exile and tribulation is the context for divine deliverance, not its contradiction. The redemptive pattern established in Jonah's belly-prayer — ṣārāh preceding salvation — is enlarged to the scale of national-eschatological history.
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How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Adversity rooted in physical constriction; extends to rivalship in marital contexts, especially co-wives.
Adversity rooted in physical constriction; extends to rivalship in marital contexts, especially co-wives.
tightness (i.e. figuratively, trouble); transitively, a female rival BDB: dearth Usage: adversary, adversity, affliction, anguish, distress, tribulation, trouble.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 73 lexical occurrence verses.
The term represents the dangers and pressures that threaten life. Proverbs 11:8
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Jonah's belly-of-the-fish prayer is one of the most instructive passages in the OT for the theology of crisis-prayer, and ṣārāh is its opening word. The preacher needs to resist two common errors about distress: the first, that ṣārāh is evidence of divine abandonment or punishment; the second, that it should be minimized or quickly moved past in pastoral care.
The OT's consistent witness is that ṣārāh is the occasion for genuine encounter — Hezekiah's illness, Jonah's fish, the exile of Israel. These are not detours around God's purposes but the circumstances in which those purposes break through most clearly. Psalm 91:15's 'I will be with him in trouble' is perhaps the most honest pastoral promise in Scripture: not 'I will keep you from trouble' but 'I will be there in it.'
The homiletical movement in texts like Jonah 2 is not from distress to ease but from distress to encounter, from ṣārāh to the experience of a God who hears.
Jon.2.2
The root ṣrr means to be tight, pressed, narrow. The noun ṣārāh is feminine and abstract, naming the experiential state of constriction. The cognate ṣar (narrow, tight, adversary) is related: one's ṣar (enemy) is the one who presses in and constricts. The physical metaphor is precise: ṣārāh is the inner experience of being hemmed in, with no room to move. This gives the prayer cries of the Psalms their physical immediacy: 'from the narrow place I called to the Lord' (Ps 118:5 — min-hammeṣar — from the tight place).
Jonah's ṣārāh in the fish belly is literally the tight, dark, underwater space from which the cry rises. The antonym in Psalm 118:5 is significant: 'he answered me with wide open space (merḥāb)' — ṣārāh to merḥāb, narrow to broad, is the movement of the prayer dynamic.
The NT does not use a single Greek equivalent of ṣārāh, but the theology maps closely onto thlipsis (G2347, tribulation/pressure) and stenochōria (narrowness, distress — from the same physical metaphor of tightness). Romans 8:35's list 'tribulation, distress (stenochōria), persecution...' reflects the ṣārāh semantic field. Paul's experience in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 — 'we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself...
This was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God' — is the NT pastoral testimony that ṣārāh functions precisely as Jonah's belly-prayer shows: to drive the sufferer beyond self-reliance to the God who raises the dead. Hebrews 5:7's account of Jesus praying 'with loud cries and tears' in Gethsemane places Christ himself within the ṣārāh-prayer tradition — the Son of God, in the extremity of the coming cross, cried out to the Father who could save him from death.
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