HEBREW WORD STUDY – NARROW –  TSAROTH  צרות  

Psalms 25:17:  “The troubles of my heart are enlarged: [O] bring thou me out of my distresses”

“When sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions”  Claudius in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet Act IV Scene V

The word for trouble here is tsaroth from the root word tsarah or tsar in its Semitic root.  If you have been following the news you may have heard this word spoken from many of the Jewish people affected by the tragedy at the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh.   The word is often spoken in Yiddish which is tsuris pronounced tzooriss and you would likely have heard that word spoken by Jewish people after this tragedy. It is an expression of grief, anguish, and pain.  The obvious context of tsar in Psalms 25:17 is trouble, distress, anguish adversity.  

We are not sure what is happening in David’s life at this time but he is deeply troubled and his troubles seem to be increasing.  Do you ever feel that way, it seems like everything is going wrong, just one thing after another and like David you are in multiple distresses.  Your troubles are just multiplying. Yet Jewish sages and rabbis have always found hope in that word tsar.  What so impressed me about the Jewish people who suffered their great loss at The Tree of Life and were interviewed, they all expressed a sense of hope.  You see they see something in this word tsar that we Christians, for whatever reason, do not see.  Actually, I did not even see it until I read it on a Jewish website. 

In searching this word out through Scripture I found that it is the same word used in Numbers 22:26: “And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place, where [was] no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.”  The word for narrow is tsarah. This is the story of Balaam and his donkey when the Angel of the LORD blocked Balaam’s donkey by creating a narrow passage. 

You see when you study a word in Hebrew you need to look closely at all its possible meanings.  Yes, the context clearly tells us we are to use the English word trouble for Psalms 25:17 and the English word narrow or tightness for Numbers 22:26.   These two English words are seemingly unrelated yet when studying a word in Hebrew you must seek the relationship between those two words if you wish to find a deeper message.  I didn’t see it until I read how this Jewish writer put the two words trouble and narrow together to show hope.  No matter how difficult the trouble may be, God has always provided a narrow passage of escape. It is a tight squeeze sometimes, but we can slip through it. God may have to oil us down a little so we can slip through that narrow passage but tsar does offer us hope in whatever trouble we go through. 

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