Language Studies

Hebrew Thoughts

tsârâh - צָרָה (Strong's #6869)
Trouble, distress, rival wife?

tsârâh "trouble, distress, rival wife?" צָרָה (Strong's #6869)

"The Lord will be a refuge in times of trouble" (, KJV)

צָרָה tsârâh "trouble" (Strong's #6869, x73) is the feminine of צָרצַר tsar/tsâr "enemy, adversary" (Strong's #6862, x105) from צָרָר tsârâr "to bind, distress, besiege" (Strong's #6887, x58). "Trouble" (x44), "distress, affliction, adversity, anguish" (x5-8), and "tribulation" (x3) are common translations.

The root idea seems to be that of contraint or compression due to pressure, lack of space, a narrow or tight environment, or squeezed and closed in on all sides. The idea of being an enemy seems to stem from the idea of an adversary being those that surround you on all sides, and a vexer being one that constantly pressures you.

The verb צָרָה tsârâh is used in of a bed covering too "narrow" to wrap oneself in. Elsewhere it describes a stone "bound" inside a sling ().

צָר tsâr is translated in as a "narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left" and in as a "tight" seal on Leviathan's sales.

In Joseph's brothers feel their guilt having witnessed the "anguish of his soul" and determine that their current situational "distress" is due to their actions. In both cases "anguish" and "distress" are the Hebrew צָרָה tsârâh.

A somewhat curious use of צָרָה tsârâh comes in , "And her rival vexed her sore, to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb" (JPS), the KJV translates "adversary", only here, and the NET Bible adds the explanatory "rival wife" to describe Peninnah's taunts of barren Hannah. Young's Literal translates as "her adversity provoked her...".

Various midrashic interpretations in later Jewish writings expound the "vexed" situation between Peninnah and Hannah, accepting co-wives as almost obligatory upon a barren marriage, and also that Hannah's subsequent birth, as with Sarah and Hagar, was a blessing from God for the "trouble" of the situation, created by the other wife.

"And you shall not take/marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival//to vex her" (NAS/KJV). Here, the verb is צָרָר tsârâr "to distress". Indeed, in , Jacob did just that, literally, marrying sisters, with one like Hannah, also being initially barren and the "hated" (loved less) one being blessed with children for her "affliction" (not צָרָה tsârâh but עֳנִי ‘onîy, Strong's #6040, x37).

Whilst having a co-wife or sister-wife is regarded as liable to lead to "trouble", a "brother is born for "adversity", צָרָה tsârâh ().

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